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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with American cheese, butter, catsup, ale, horseradish, garlic, and spices, served hot over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate or finely cut the cheese.

  2. Rub the pan with the garlic.

  3. Mix catsup, horseradish, and salt with the cheese.

Make the rarebit

  1. Heat the ale or beer until boiling hot.

  2. Add the cheese mixture to the beer and stir rapidly until smooth and creamy.

Serve

  1. Beat very hard at the end and serve immediately on squares of toast.

  2. Ensure the plates and toast are hot and ready when the rarebit is done.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

American cheese
Melts into the hot liquid to form the body of the sauce.
Ale or beer
Liquid that thins the melted cheese and adds a slightly bitter, malty note.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich cheese.

The step that matters

Stirring the cheese into the hot beer. Stirring rapidly while adding the cheese keeps it evenly melted and smooth. Too much heat or too little stirring can make the cheese proteins tighten and clump, leaving the sauce grainy or stringy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, beer, horseradish, garlic, pepper, sauce. 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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