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Breakfast

Scrambled Cheese

A dish of beaten eggs cooked with butter, milk, salt, pepper, and cheese, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Scrambled Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and add to the melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in a splash of milk, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the grated cheese just before removing from heat.

  3. Serve on buttered toast.

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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

Eggs
Set into soft curds as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture so the eggs stay soft and creamy rather than dry.
Cheese
Melts into the eggs, adding savory flavor and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Add the grated cheese just before removing from heat. Egg proteins keep setting after the pan leaves the heat. Adding cheese at the end and removing the pan while the eggs are still slightly soft keeps the curds tender and stops the cheese from turning greasy or rubbery.

“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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