Skip to main content
Main

Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with Worcestershire sauce, mustard, Tabasco, and baking soda, served hot over bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. In a warm chafing dish or saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the sliced cheese and melt slowly, stirring occasionally.

  3. Once the cheese is half melted, stir steadily until fully melted and smooth.

  4. Slowly pour in the Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, and Tabasco, stirring rapidly to blend.

  5. Quickly add the baking soda and stir until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on warm bread or 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. Butter + milktop 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 body, flavour and richness.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the melted cheese smooth and adds richness.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds acidity and savoury depth that balances the rich cheese.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cheese, helping it melt smoothly instead of clumping.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese slowly. High heat tightens the cheese proteins and squeezes out fat, so the sauce can turn grainy, greasy or stringy. Gentle heat and steady stirring let the cheese melt evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

More welsh rarebit recipes

Tomato 3 See all 354 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes