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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce thickened with milk, flour, and spices, served over biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until scalding hot.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cheese, flour, egg, mustard, salt, and cayenne.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk to the cheese mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook slowly until the mixture thickens to the consistency of cream.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until well combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over prepared biscuits 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  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, providing the rich flavour and body of the rarebit.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and adds richness to the mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into, giving a smooth, pourable sauce.
Whole wheat flour
Helps stabilise the cheese sauce so it thickens smoothly without separating.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the cheese mixture. Adding the milk gradually while stirring constantly prevents the egg from scrambling and keeps the cheese sauce smooth. Cooking slowly afterward keeps the cheese from becoming stringy or grainy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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