Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Toast

A toasted bread topped with a mixture of Cheshire cheese, butter, beaten eggs, and cayenne pepper, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓
Cheese Toast

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the Cheshire cheese in a mortar with the butter, beaten eggs, and cayenne pepper until well mixed.

  2. Spread the mixture an inch thick on toasted bread.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the bread on a baking tin and broil it in a Dutch oven until hot.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Cheshire cheese
Melts and browns under heat, giving the topping its body and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the mixture smooth and rich as it heats.
Eggs
Bind the cheese and butter together and set slightly when heated.

The step that matters

Broiling until hot. Cheese and fat brown quickly under high heat, so the topping can move from bubbling to scorched in a short time. Watching it closely keeps the cheese golden rather than burnt.

“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.

More cheese toast recipes

You might also like