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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are baked strips of cheese, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and cheese together.

  2. Rub in the butter with your fingertips.

  3. Add the salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and the beaten egg yolk.

  4. Turn the mixture onto a floured surface and roll it out carefully.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into strips, twisting them or leaving them plain.

  2. Place on a floured baking sheet and bake until golden.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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 + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

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

Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the straws brown and crisp as they bake.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, short texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together when rolled and cut.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness to help it hold its shape.

The step that matters

Rolling out the dough carefully. Overworked or warm dough becomes tough and greasy, and cold, gently handled dough keeps the butter in small pockets so the straws stay crisp and short. Rolling gently avoids tearing and keeps the strips even.

“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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