Skip to main content
Bread

Toast and Cheese

A toasted bread sandwich with melted Cheshire or Gloster cheese, seasoned with mustard, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Toast and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the crust off the bread and toast one side very slightly until just browned.

  2. Cut the cheese to be ½ inch smaller than the bread on each side, removing the rind and any specks.

Toast the cheese

  1. Place the cheese on the toasted side of the bread in a cheese-toaster.

  2. Watch carefully to prevent burning and stir with a spoon to avoid a pellicle forming.

Serve

  1. Serve with mustard, pepper, and salt.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the base that holds the melted cheese and gives a toasted, crisp surface.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top of the toast, providing the main flavour and rich texture.

The step that matters

Watch carefully while the cheese toasts. Cheese proteins and sugars brown quickly and then burn under strong heat. Stirring the melted surface with a spoon helps prevent the skin, or pellicle, from forming.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cheese, 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.

More cheese toast recipes

Welsh 14with Ale 6with Mustard 5Tomato 4with Port Wine 3Corn and Tomato 3 See all 140 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipes