Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked sticks made from Parmesan, butter, flour, egg yolk, cayenne pepper, and mace.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix equal weights of grated Parmesan, butter, and flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

  3. Season with cayenne and pounded mace.

  4. Add enough egg yolk to form a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the paste thinly and cut into lengths of 3-4 inches and ¼ inch wide.

  2. Bake until rich yellow in color, being careful not to burn them.

Serve

  1. Serve cold or hot, arranged in rows or bundles.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Butter and flour 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

Parmesan cheese
Provides savory flavor and salty, umami depth to the straws.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough short and tender and helps the straws brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once it is rolled and baked.
Egg yolk
Binds the crumbly mixture into a stiff paste that can be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Bake until rich yellow, not burnt. The straws are thin, so they can move from golden to burnt quickly. Dark over-browning makes them bitter, while pale straws stay soft and underbaked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, butter, flour, egg, pepper, bread. 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 straws recipes

Cayenne 11 See all 284 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesCheese BallsCheese Balls97 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes