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Welsh Rarebit

A melted cheese and butter mixture flavored with mustard, pepper, salt, and ale, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the rarebit

  1. Combine the cheese, butter, mustard, pepper, salt, and old ale in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir constantly until the cheese is completely dissolved.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich sauce that gives the rarebit its body and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the melted cheese silky and glossy rather than grainy.
Old ale
Adds liquid and a malty depth that thins the cheese into a pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the cheese is completely dissolved. Cheese is heated gently and continuously so its proteins and fats emulsify smoothly. Too much heat or uneven stirring can make the sauce separate, turn grainy, or stick and scorch on the bottom.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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