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Welsh Rarebit

A savory cheese sauce made with butter, dry mustard, cheese, and ale or water, served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese 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. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the dry mustard and stir well.

  3. Gradually mix in the grated cheese until it begins to soften.

  4. Pour in the ale or boiling water and stir vigorously.

  5. Cook until the mixture is thick, smooth, and a rich yellow, about 3-4 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast or with snowflake crackers if toast is unavailable.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 to give it body, richness and its savoury flavour.
Ale
Thins the melted cheese into a smooth sauce and adds a malty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the cheese sauce smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cheese gradually. Adding cheese in small amounts over gentle heat lets it melt evenly. Dumping it in at once or overheating can make the proteins tighten and the sauce grainy or stringy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese. 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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