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Dessert

Cheese Pastry

A small pastry made with cheese, flour, butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese Pastry

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, cheese, and butter.

  2. Make a hole in the center and add the pepper, salt, egg yolk, and lemon juice.

  3. Knead until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin and cut into small cakes or strips using a jagging knife.

  2. Place on a floured baking sheet and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 4 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after rolling and baking.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the pastry tender and crisp rather than tough.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and some fat, and helps the pastry brown as it bakes.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness, helping it hold together when kneaded.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and crisply all the way through. Thick pieces stay doughy in the center, and the short bake time may not fully set them.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, flour, butter, egg, 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.

More cheese pastry recipes

Cayenne 3 See all 4 →

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