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Cheese Sauce I

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

  1. Heat milk and soak bread crumbs for 10 minutes.

  2. Reheat the soaked bread and milk in a double boiler; add butter, cheese, and seasonings.

  3. Stir until the cheese is melted; then add the beaten egg.

  4. Cook for one more minute; serve 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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it body, richness and its characteristic flavor.
Egg
Thickens the sauce gently as it cooks, adding body and richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into and the bread softens in.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they help thicken the sauce and give it a smoother texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, silkier mouthfeel and richer flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the beaten egg should be added off the heat or at low heat and cooked only briefly. Too much heat can curdle the sauce, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

“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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