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Boiled Cheese

A simple cheese sauce made by boiling cheese with butter, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Combine the grated cheese, butter, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat until it boils.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer to a small dish.

  2. Brown under the broiler, or serve without browning.

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

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the liquid to give the dish its main flavor and creamy body.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat as it cooks, thickening the sauce and giving it structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that melts the cheese smoothly and keeps the sauce moist.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the sauce smoother and richer in mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until it boils, then add the egg. Cheese proteins can turn grainy or stringy if overheated, and the egg needs to be added to a warm, not violently boiling, mixture so it thickens smoothly rather than scrambling in lumps.

“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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