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Welsh Rare-bit.

A cheese sauce made with butter, cheese, milk or ale, mustard, and salt, served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Rare-bit.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the cheese, cut into thin slices, and stir until melted.

  3. Gradually add the milk or ale, stirring continuously.

  4. Mix in the mustard and a little salt.

  5. If the mixture bubbles without melting the cheese, lift the saucepan off the heat and stir until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over slices of hot buttered 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. Butter + milktop 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 its rich flavor and smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the sauce stay smooth and glossy.
Milk or ale
Adds liquid that loosens the melted cheese into a pourable sauce.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese gently. High heat makes cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat, leaving a grainy or oily sauce. Keeping the heat low, or lifting the pan off the heat, lets the cheese melt evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, 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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