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Welsh Rarebit

A creamy cheese sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the cheese into small pieces or grate it if hard.

  2. Put the cheese and milk in a double boiler.

  3. Toast the bread and keep it hot.

  4. Mix the mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper; add the egg and beat well.

Make the rarebit

  1. When the cheese is melted, stir in the egg and butter, and cook for two minutes until it thickens slightly, but do not let it curdle.

  2. Pour the mixture over the toast.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich cream cheese
Melts into a smooth sauce that forms the body of the rarebit.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it a richer, firmer texture.
Cream or milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg into the cheese. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the sauce gets too hot or cooks too long it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stop once the sauce has just thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, pepper, cream, 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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