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Savoury Cheese Cakes

Savory cheese cakes made from stale bread, cheese, pepper, sea salt, and eggs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Savoury Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Finely grate equal amounts of stale bread and good cheese.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix into a batter with eggs.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into thin cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  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

Stale bread
Provides the bulk and structure of the cakes once grated and bound with egg.
Good cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the cakes brown as they fry.
Eggs
Bind the grated bread and cheese into a mixture that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until golden brown. Cakes that are too hot burn outside while staying raw inside, and cakes that are too cool absorb oil and turn greasy. Medium heat lets the centres set while the surface browns evenly.

“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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