Name: Cheese Entree
Ingredients: 1 slice Roquefort cheese; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; 3-4 tablespoons fruit juice; slices of tart apples (russet or Northern spy)

Why it works: Roquefort cheese and butter work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Entree

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

1 slice Roquefort cheese
1 walnut-sized piece of butter
3-4 tablespoons fruit juice
slices of tart apples (russet or Northern spy)

Directions

Make the spread

Mix the Roquefort cheese and butter thoroughly.
Add fruit juice to create a thin paste.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture over the apple slices.
Serve chilled.

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.

Roquefort cheese + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Roquefort cheese + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Walnut + appletop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roquefort cheese: Provides the sharp, salty, tangy flavour that defines the spread.
Butter: Adds fat, making the cheese softer and smoother to spread.
Fruit juice: Moistens the cheese and butter into a thin, spreadable paste.
Tart apples: Provide a crisp, acidic base that contrasts with the rich cheese.

“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.