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Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are baked strips of flour, cheese, butter, cayenne, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and cheese.

  2. Rub in the butter until combined.

  3. Add the cayenne and moisten with the cream, working into a smooth paste.

  4. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into even-sized long narrow strips or fingers.

  2. Place on a buttered baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 8 to 10 minutes.

  3. Tie into small bundles with colored ribbon and serve hot or cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once moistened and rolled.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and helps the straws brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the straws short and crisp rather than tough.
Cream
Adds moisture that binds the flour and cheese into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Moistening with the cream. Flour absorbs liquid and sets the dough's texture. Too little cream leaves the paste crumbly and hard to roll, while too much makes it sticky. Working it only until smooth keeps gluten development low, so the straws stay crisp instead of tough.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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