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Dessert

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are baked dough strips made with cheese, egg yolk, flour, butter, breadcrumbs, salt, and paprika or cayenne.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk and mix in all the ingredients thoroughly.

  3. If the mixture is too stiff to roll out, add a little ice water.

  4. Turn the mixture onto a floured board and knead until smooth.

  5. Roll out to a thickness of about ¼ inch.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into strips and rings.

  2. Place on a greased baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 10 minutes, or until slightly browned.

  4. Thread a bundle of the straws through each ring.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Cheese
Provides rich flavor and fat, and helps the dough bind and brown while baking.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness and fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the straws brown.

The step that matters

Rolling to an even thickness. Dough rolled to about ¼ inch bakes evenly; thicker pieces stay soft in the centre while thinner ones over-brown. Uniform strips also cook at the same rate.

“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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