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Savory Cheese Toast

Cheese toast made by pouring a simmered vinegar and pepper sauce with cheese over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savory Cheese Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Simmer vinegar, red pepper, bay leaf, onion, and celery for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture into a scant pint of cream sauce.

  3. Stir in a tiny pinch of baking soda to prevent curdling.

  4. Add grated cheese and cook until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese sauce over crisp circles of buttered toast.

  2. 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cheesetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the cream sauce to give it rich flavor and a smooth, thick body.
Cream sauce
Forms the creamy base that carries the cheese and coats the toast.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich sauce.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and flavor to the strained base.
Baking soda
Neutralizes acidity in the sauce so it is less likely to curdle.

The step that matters

Adding the cheese. Cheese cooked at too high a heat or for too long can turn stringy or greasy. Adding it to the warm sauce and cooking gently until just melted keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, onion, cream, sauce, cheese):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, onion, cream, sauce, cheese. 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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