Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Sauce I

A creamy cheese sauce made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, cheese, egg, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Sauce I

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bread crumbs and soak for 10 minutes.

  3. Reheat the soaked bread and milk in a double boiler.

  4. Add the butter, cheese, and seasonings; stir until the cheese melts.

  5. Add the slightly beaten egg and cook for one more minute.

Serve

  1. Serve the cheese sauce on toast or crackers.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and thicken the sauce as they absorb liquid and soften.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it its rich flavor and smooth body.
Egg
Thickens the sauce gently when cooked, adding body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and a rounded, rich flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg. The egg must be slightly beaten and cooked gently in the warm sauce for only about a minute. Overheating can cause the egg proteins to tighten and turn the sauce grainy or curdled.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes