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Stewed Cheese and Onions

A stew of onions and cheese cooked together with butter, pepper, and sea salt, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Cheese and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them until soft enough to mash.

  2. Drain any remaining water from the saucepan.

  3. Add the mashed onions.

Make the stew

  1. Cut the cheese into thin slices or grate it.

  2. Add the cheese and butter.

  3. Place the saucepan over the heat.

  4. Stir for 2-3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with toasted bread.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften when boiled and mashed, forming the body and sweet base of the stew.
Cheese
Melts into the onions, adding richness and a savoury, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the cheese blend smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Stir the cheese into the hot onions. Cheese can turn stringy or grainy if it overheats or melts too fast. Stirring over gentle heat for a short time helps the fat and proteins emulsify into a smooth, cohesive stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

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