What spices go with cheese

Chiles rellenos is this pairing and almost nothing else. The poblano is chosen for its wall rather than its heat — it has to hold molten cheese through a batter and a fryer — and the mild grassy flesh is what stops the dish being simply fried cheese.

How: Roasted, peeled, stuffed with cheese, battered and fried

Add alongside: Tomato, Onion, Cumin

Cacio e pepe is the case in point: pecorino and coarsely ground pepper, and nothing else. Cheese fat carries pepper's aroma compounds and its salt amplifies the pungency.

Add alongside: Rice

• Grind fresh and coarse. This dish exposes stale pre-ground pepper mercilessly.

Fresh white cheese and labneh with za’atar and olive oil is a Levantine breakfast, and the pairing works because the herb is dry and astringent where the cheese is soft and lactic. The oil is not optional — it carries the aromatics that the dry leaf will not release on its own.

How: Scattered over labneh with olive oil; Pressed onto a fresh white cheese

Add alongside: Sumac, Sesame seed, Garlic

A genuine tradition rather than a garnish: Havarti, Munster, Leyden and a number of Dutch and central European cheeses carry caraway through the paste. The sharpness cuts the fat and the seed gives something to bite.

Add alongside: Rice, Black pepper, Apple

The unwritten rule of European cooking: wherever cheese meets a white sauce — gratin, soufflé, mornay, croque monsieur — there is nutmeg. It lifts dairy fat, which otherwise flattens on the palate, and at the right quantity nobody identifies it.

Add alongside: White pepper, Bay leaf, Spinach

• A rasp, not a spoonful. Nutmeg is one of the few spices where the correct amount is one the eater cannot name.

Dairy fat blunts capsaicin, which is the whole mechanism: cheese makes a jalapeño comfortable to eat in quantity rather than merely tolerable. It is why poppers, queso and jalapeño cornbread all exist and why the thick-walled fresh pod matters more here than heat does.

Add alongside: Maize, Onion, Cumin

Dairy is where mastic belongs, and the reason is textural as much as aromatic. Ground into a hot milk mixture the resin dissolves and contributes body and a distinctive elasticity — the chew in Greek kaymak ice cream and Turkish dondurma — while the pine and cedar notes sit against the fat without being absorbed by it the way a delicate aromatic would be.

How: Ground and whisked into a hot milk base for ice cream; In milk puddings such as muhallebi

Add alongside: Mahleb, Green cardamom, Honey

• Add the powder gradually while whisking. Dropped into hot milk at once it clumps into strands that will not disperse.

Soft and goat cheeses are lactic, tangy and pale, and pink peppercorns supply sweetness, resin and colour against all three. The pairing is as much visual as culinary and is none the worse for it.

How: Crushed over a soft goat cheese with honey; Pressed onto a fresh cheese as a coating

Add alongside: Honey, Thyme, Lemon

Mustard with cheese is near-universal in British and French cooking — in a rarebit, a cheese sauce, a croque monsieur — and the reason is that mustard's pungency cuts fat directly. Whole seed gives texture where prepared mustard would give only heat.

Add alongside: Black pepper, Nutmeg, Rice

A traditional pairing across Turkey and the Levant, in white cheeses rolled in the seed and in cheese-filled pastries. The peppery herbal note reads against a salty fresh cheese much as cracked pepper does, and the crunch is a real part of the effect.

How: Pressed onto the outside of a fresh white cheese; In the seed mix on a cheese börek

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Sumac

• Uncooked here, which is the exception to the usual rule — on a cheese the raw seed is doing textural work and a toasted one goes soft.

Levantine cheese pastries use mahleb in the dough, where its almond-and-cherry note works against a salty fresh cheese much as a nut would. It is one of the few contexts in which the spice appears in savoury baking rather than sweet.

How: In the dough for cheese-filled pastries; In savoury breads with sesame

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Nigella, Black pepper

A central European habit — poppy seed on and in cheese pastries, and with soft cheese fillings in strudel and kolache. The seed is used ground here, cooked with sugar and dairy into a filling rather than scattered.

How: In a sweet cheese and poppy seed strudel filling; Scattered on cheese pastries before baking

Add alongside: Sugar, Lemon, Cassia

Cream cheese and fresh dairy desserts take tonka well for the same reason cream does: the aroma is fat-soluble and diffuses evenly, and the hay-like sweetness reads as an intensified vanilla against a mild dairy background. Recorded for fresh dairy rather than for aged cheese, where it does not belong.

How: In cheesecake and fresh-cheese desserts; Grated over cream desserts

Add alongside: Vanilla, Green cardamom

• A few passes on a rasp is enough. Too much tonka turns soapy and bitter and cannot be corrected.