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Another Way to Toast Cheese

A toasted bread topped with a cheese and breadcrumb mixture, browned to a golden crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Another Way to Toast Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese mixture

  1. In a saucepan, mix the bread crumbs, butter, cheese, egg yolks, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir the mixture until heated through.

Toast and serve

  1. Spread the mixture thickly on small pieces of toasted bread.

  2. Brown the cheese using a salamander, hot shovel, or by placing the toast in a Dutch oven until heated through and the cheese is browned.

  3. Serve immediately while hot.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Bulk the mixture and give it a soft, spreadable body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the mixture stay smooth and spreadable when warm.
Cheese
Provides the main flavor and melts into the topping, browning when heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it to a creamy, set texture when heated.

The step that matters

Browning the cheese. Heat from a salamander, hot shovel, or Dutch oven must be strong enough to brown the cheese quickly. Holding the toast under gentle heat too long can dry the bread and make the topping rubbery instead of golden.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, egg, cream, 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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