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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese-based sauce served over toast, made with egg, cheese, butter, milk, mustard, salt, pepper, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated cheese, butter, coarse sea salt, red pepper, mustard, and rich milk.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a little cornstarch mixed in milk.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on 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. Pepper + mustardtop 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, giving the cheese sauce body and a thicker, creamier texture.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce, providing fat, savory flavor and the rich, stringy character of the rarebit.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess that keeps it smooth when heated.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and helps it feel smooth and rounded on the palate.
Cornstarch
Swells with heat to thicken the sauce so it clings to toast instead of running off.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed into cold milk first so it disperses evenly, then the sauce must be heated enough for the starch granules to swell. Added dry or unheated, it clumps and leaves the sauce grainy or thin.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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