Skip to main content
Main

Welsh Rabbit

A toasted bread topped with melted cheese, milk, mustard, pepper, and salt, served immediately.

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

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Cut stale bread into slices.

  2. Toast the slices on both sides.

  3. Butter the toasted bread.

  4. Place the buttered toast on a hot plate in front of the fire.

Make the cheese topping

  1. Cut the cheese into small pieces.

  2. Melt the cheese in a saucepan with milk, mustard, pepper, and salt. Stir until smooth.

Serve

  1. Spread the cheese mixture quickly on the buttered toast.

  2. 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Rich cheese
Melts into a smooth sauce and provides the main flavour and richness.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese so it spreads easily instead of clumping.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.
Stale bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the cheese topping.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the toast stay moist beneath the cheese.

The step that matters

Melt the cheese gently and stir until smooth. Cheese proteins tighten and turn grainy or stringy when overheated, so low, steady heat and constant stirring keep the sauce smooth and spreadable.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, milk, bread, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes