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Cheese Relish

A warm cheese sauce made with fresh cheese, sweet milk or cream, butter, and crushed crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the relish

  1. Combine the sliced cheese and sweet milk or cream in a skillet.

  2. Add dry mustard, salt, pepper, and butter, stirring constantly.

  3. Gradually sprinkle in the crushed crackers while stirring.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 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

Fresh cheese
Melts into the liquid to form the main body of the relish.
Sweet milk or cream
Provides moisture and richness so the cheese melts into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky texture and rich flavour.
Crackers
Thicken the mixture as their starch absorbs liquid, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the crushed crackers. Crackers should be added gradually while stirring so their starch absorbs liquid evenly. Dumping them in at once can leave lumps and an uneven, overly thick texture.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, milk, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, milk, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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