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Cheese Cream Toast

A toast topped with grated cheese and a thickened milk and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the slices of stale bread.

  2. Grate cheese and cover the toasted slices slightly with it.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water, then stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Cook the mixture until it thickens, then season with salt and butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the toast and cheese in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Pour the cream over the toast and cheese before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Stale bread
Forms the base that soaks up the sauce and holds the cheese.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Plain flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a cream sauce as its starch gelatinises.
Cheese (in the method)
Melts over the toast, adding richness, savoury flavour and a browned surface.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream sauce. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before being stirred into boiling milk, and the mixture cooked fully. Otherwise lumps form and the starch stays raw, so the sauce does not thicken evenly or lose its floury taste.

“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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