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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with butter, corn starch, cream, mild cheese, salt, mustard, cayenne, served over toast or zephyrettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the corn starch and stir until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the cream while stirring constantly and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

  5. Season with salt, mustard, and cayenne.

Serve

  1. Serve over zephyrettes or toasted bread, pouring the mixture over the untoasted side.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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 and rich flavor.
Cream
Forms the liquid base that makes the sauce smooth and spreadable.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream so the sauce coats the toast instead of running off.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps start the sauce smoothly.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually while stirring constantly. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps the corn starch evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Cooking afterward lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce properly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, cream, 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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