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Sauce

Cheese Sauce

A quick cheese sauce made with flour, cayenne pepper, and grated cheddar, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cheddar cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,592 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine flour, cayenne pepper, and grated Cheddar cheese.

  2. Simmer the mixture for a few minutes until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve over boiled fish.

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. Flour + cheddar cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + cheddar cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,016 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with gentle heat.
Cheddar cheese
Adds savory flavor and richness, and melts into the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat that gives the sauce its bite.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Gentle simmering lets the flour's starch swell and thicken the sauce, and cooks out any raw flour taste. Too much heat can make the cheese grainy or oily, so keep the mixture at a gentle simmer.

“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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