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Cheese Feathers

A fried pastry made from a batter of flour, butter, Parmesan, eggs, cayenne, salt, and mustard, cooked in suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese Feathers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix cold water and flour until smooth.

  2. Melt butter and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in Parmesan cheese, egg white, egg yolk, cayenne, salt, and mustard.

Fry

  1. Heat suet in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot suet and fry until golden brown.

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 + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

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

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 batter's structure as it sets in the hot fat.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter together.
Egg white
Adds lift and helps the batter set into a light, crisp shape.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to flavour and tenderness.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot suet. The fat must be hot enough so the batter sets and browns quickly; if the suet is too cool, the feathers absorb grease and turn heavy and pale.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, parmesan cheese, egg, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, parmesan cheese, egg, 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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