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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with grated cheese, milk, mustard, spices, and egg yolks, served over toast or crackers.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, combine the grated cheese and milk.

  2. Mix the mustard, coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and baking soda with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  3. Add the egg yolks to the paste and beat well.

  4. Once the cheese is melted, stir in the egg mixture and butter.

  5. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over toast or heated square crackers and serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide rich flavour and a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and add richness and smoothness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that melts the cheese and makes the sauce pourable.
Baking soda
Helps keep the cheese smooth by reducing its acidity so it melts without clumping.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy texture and richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring over the double boiler's indirect heat lets the yolks thicken the sauce evenly and smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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