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Cheese Straws

A baked cheese snack made from Parmesan, flour, butter, cayenne pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and butter 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 Straws

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Rub the flour into the butter with a pinch of cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the Parmesan cheese and just enough water to moisten the mixture.

  3. Roll out the dough thinly and cut it with a sharp knife.

Bake

  1. Bake on a baking sheet for five minutes.

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. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and sharp aroma, and helps the straws brown as they bake.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds together when rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and crisp rather than tough.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Too much water makes the dough sticky and hard to roll thinly, while too little leaves it crumbly. Add just enough to moisten the mixture, since flour absorbs liquid unevenly.

“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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