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Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are puff pastry strips filled with grated cheese, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,588 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Roll out the puff paste to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut into strips 1½ inches wide and 4 inches long.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a little grated cheese along the center of half the strips.

  2. Top each with a strip without cheese to form a sandwich.

  3. Brush each with the egg yolk.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve cold or warm, garnished with mustard and cress or parsley.

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. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cheese + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff paste or rough puff
Forms flaky, layered pastry that puffs and crisps when baked.
Rich grated cheese
Provides savory flavor and melts into the filling between the pastry layers.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top to help the pastry brown to a golden color.

The step that matters

Brushing with egg yolk. Egg yolk promotes even browning through the Maillard reaction and sugar caramelization in the oven. Brush evenly without letting it pool at the edges, since pooled egg can make edges dark or sticky while leaving other areas pale.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, mustard. 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.

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