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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with American cheese, cream, mustard, and spices served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the grated cheese, cream, salt, pepper, mustard, and red pepper.

  3. Warm the mixture slowly on the side of the range until the cheese melts.

Serve

  1. Prepare a hot covered dish lined with hot buttered toast.

  2. Pour the melted cheese mixture over each slice of toast.

  3. Serve immediately on hot plates.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rich american cheese
Melts into the sauce and provides the main body, flavor and richness of the rarebit.
Cream
Adds moisture and smoothness so the melted cheese stays fluid rather than grainy.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the saucepan base and the buttered toast.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture slowly on the side of the range. Cheese proteins toughen and separate when overheated, leaving a greasy or grainy sauce. Gentle, gradual heat lets the cheese melt evenly into the cream.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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