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Cheese Neuveau

A layered cheese bread casserole baked with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Neuveau

Ingredients

Directions

Layer

  1. Butter the slices of bread and place them in a frying pan.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the bread.

  3. Add a thick layer of grated cheese on top.

  4. Repeat with another layer of bread and salted cheese until the pan is full.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour 1 cup of rich milk over the layers.

  2. Cover the pan and steam on low heat for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Turn onto a hot platter and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the dish and soaks up the milk as it steams.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the bread brown lightly in the pan.
Grated cheese
Melts between the bread layers, adding flavor and binding the slices together.
Rich milk
Provides moisture that soaks into the bread and softens it during steaming.

The step that matters

Steam covered on low heat. Covering the pan traps steam so the milk soaks into the bread and the cheese melts evenly. Low heat prevents the milk from boiling away or the bottom from scorching before the center softens.

“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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