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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese Straws are baked strips of dough flavored with cheese and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Straws

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until smooth.

  3. Mix in the grated cheese, egg yolks, egg white, and salt until combined.

  4. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into narrow strips, 4 to 5 inches long.

  2. Place on a well-buttered baking sheet.

  3. Bake for 5 minutes until golden.

Arrange and serve

  1. Arrange in a glass dish, laying two strips one way and two the other.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with the butter and eggs.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and helps it brown in the oven.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and contributes to browning.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and give it tenderness.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps bind the dough and set it during baking.

The step that matters

Bake for 5 minutes until golden. Five minutes is a short bake, and the straws can go from pale to over-browned quickly. Watching the colour matters because the cheese and butter brown fast at this heat.

“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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