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Welsh Rarebit

A savory cheese sauce made with American cheese, butter, mustard, and spices, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. Melt the butter in a chafing dish or skillet.

  2. Stir in the mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the cheese and milk, stirring until the cheese is dissolved.

  4. Once melted, add the beaten eggs and stir until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve over 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. 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

American cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich sauce that forms the body of the rarebit.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the sauce and giving it body.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a pourable sauce with moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky texture and carries the mustard and cayenne flavour.
Baking soda
Raises the sauce's pH slightly, helping the cheese melt smoothly and stay creamy.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs and stir until thickened. Egg proteins set with gentle heat. Adding them to a sauce that is too hot can scramble them, leaving grainy specks instead of a smooth, thick sauce. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

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