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Savoury Cheese

A melted cheese sauce made with cheddar, milk, arrowroot, pepper, and salt, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheddar cheese and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Savoury Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches boiling point.

  2. Add the pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Grate the cheese and add it to the milk, stirring until it dissolves.

  4. Mix the arrowroot with 2 teaspoons of milk, then stir it into the cheese mixture.

  5. Stir quickly for about 1 minute, then pour over the hot buttered toast.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Cheddar cheese + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Cheddar cheese + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,016 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheddar cheese
Melts into the milk to give the sauce its main flavour and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into and the thickener is dispersed in.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the arrowroot into the cheese mixture. Arrowroot must be mixed into a little cold milk first so it disperses without lumps, then it thickens as the sauce heats. Stirring quickly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheddar cheese, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheddar cheese, milk, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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