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Welsh Rarebit

A savory cheese sauce made with cream, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, and cheese, served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 pan over low heat without browning.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth and frothy.

  3. Slowly add the cream, stirring until smooth after each addition.

  4. Season with salt, mustard, and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cheese, finely cut or ground, and stir continually until the mixture is smooth.

  2. Serve over toast or crackers.

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 + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the sauce stays smooth and spreadable.
Rich cream cheese
Provides the main body, flavour and melting texture of the rarebit.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour and forms the base for the flour roux.

The step that matters

Add the cheese while stirring continually. Cheese proteins tighten and turn grainy or oily when overheated or left unstirred. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly lets the cheese melt evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, pepper, 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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