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Welsh Rare Bit

A cheese and mustard dip served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Welsh Rare Bit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Mix the cheese, baking soda, mustard, milk, salt, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Cook the mixture over hot water until the cheese melts.

  3. Pour the melted cheese mixture onto the slightly beaten eggs.

  4. Add the butter and cook over hot water, stirring constantly until thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over slices of toast or crackers and serve immediately.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce and provides the main flavour and rich, creamy body.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently, giving it a richer, more set texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the cheese so it forms a smooth, pourable sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and helps the sauce stay glossy.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cheese, helping it melt smoothly and reducing stringiness.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs into the cheese mixture over hot water. Egg proteins set at about 160°F, so heat must stay gentle and be stirred constantly. Too much heat curdles the eggs and leaves the sauce grainy instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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