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Welsh Rarebit with Cream

A savory cheese sauce made with eggs, milk, butter, sherry, mustard, cayenne, and grated cheese, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Welsh Rarebit with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs well and add the milk.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the egg mixture with butter, sherry, mustard, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Stir in the grated cheese and cook for 5 minutes, stirring rapidly.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on buttered toast that is slightly moistened with water on hot plates.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the cheese mixture into a smooth, spoonable sauce as they set with gentle heat.
American cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it body, richness and its characteristic savory flavor.
Milk
Loosens the egg and cheese mixture so it cooks into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balance the richness of the cheese.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a silky mouthfeel and helps it flow smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring the cheese in over heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the mixture should be cooked gently while stirring rapidly. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the melted cheese smooth rather than stringy or grainy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, sherry, cheese. 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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