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Cooking Cheese

A baked or fried cheese ball made from Gruyère, butter, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Gruyere cheese and butter work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Cooking Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water, Gruyère cheese, butter, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil until the cheese dissolves.

  2. Gradually add flour until a stiff paste forms that does not stick to your fingers.

  3. Remove from heat and work in the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.

Shape and cook

  1. Let the mixture cool, then form into balls slightly larger than walnuts and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 to 20 minutes until light brown, or alternatively fry in lard until golden.

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. Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Gruyere cheese + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the paste and add richness and structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides the body of the stiff paste that holds the balls together.
Gruyere cheese
Adds savory flavor and melts into the paste, contributing richness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.

The step that matters

Work in the eggs one at a time off the heat. Adding eggs to a mixture that is too hot can scramble them, and adding them all at once makes the paste hard to bring together smoothly. Full incorporation before cooling keeps the dough uniform and able to rise and set evenly in the oven.

“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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