Skip to main content
Main

Delicious Scalloped Cheese

A baked dish of bread crumbs, milk, eggs, cheese, and butter, topped with crumbed butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Delicious Scalloped Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the dry bread crumbs in sweet milk until soft.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread crumbs with beaten eggs, grated cheese, and butter.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

  2. Top with buttered, peppered, and salted bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

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 + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they absorb liquid and give the custard a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set when heated, binding the mixture into a sliceable, custard-like structure.
Grated cheese
Melts into the custard, adding richness, savory flavor and a silky texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the bread crumbs and forms the liquid base that becomes custard when baked.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the custard dry, grainy, or curdled. Remove it when the center is barely firm and it will finish setting as it rests.

“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.

You might also like