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Welsh Rabbit

A baked cheese and bread custard made with milk, eggs, cheese, and crumbled bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cheese base

  1. Pour boiling milk over grated cheese and stir until dissolved and smooth.

  2. When cool, add beaten eggs.

  3. Add crumbled bread.

Bake

  1. Pour mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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 + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + biscuittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Milk + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Egg + biscuittop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid base that melts the cheese into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Cheese
Supplies the main flavor and, melted into the hot milk, forms the body of the dish.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the mixture into a custard-like texture.
Bread
Absorbs liquid and helps thicken the mixture so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Add the eggs only when the mixture has cooled. Egg proteins coagulate at high heat, so adding beaten eggs to very hot milk and cheese can scramble them and leave lumps instead of a smooth, even set.

“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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