Skip to main content
Main

Welsh Rarebit

A melted cheese and butter sauce mixed with egg yolk and Madeira wine, served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheese

  1. Cut the cheese into small strips or grate it if hard.

  2. In a deep dish, combine the cheese and a lump of butter.

  3. Heat on the stove until melted, stirring to mix with the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Whip the egg yolk with the Madeira wine.

  2. Gradually add the egg mixture to the melted cheese, stirring until smooth.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture on hot 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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Madeira wine + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 the main flavour and rich body.
Butter
Helps the cheese melt smoothly and adds richness to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy texture.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that balances the rich cheese.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the melted cheese. If the cheese is too hot or the egg is added all at once, the yolk can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps it smooth.

“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.

More welsh rarebit recipes

Tomato 3 See all 354 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes