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Cream Cheese Rarebit

A savory sauce of cream cheese, milk, butter, and eggs served hot over crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Cream Cheese Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the milk, seasonings, and slightly beaten eggs.

  3. Stir and cook like scrambled eggs.

  4. When nearly ready, add the cream cheese rubbed through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on crackers.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, custard-like body as they cook, giving the rarebit its thick texture.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps keep the eggs from sticking as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the cooked eggs soft and loose rather than dry.

The step that matters

Stir and cook like scrambled eggs. Eggs turn grainy and curdled if cooked over too much heat or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the mixture smooth and creamy.

“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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