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Welsh Rabbit on Triscuit

A creamy cheese sauce served over toasted Triscuit crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Rabbit on Triscuit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until scalding hot.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cheese, flour, mustard, paprika, and beaten egg.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk to the cheese mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Cook slowly until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until well combined.

Serve

  1. Heat the Triscuit crackers in the oven and pour the cheese mixture over them.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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

Imperial cheese
Melts into the sauce and provides the main flavour and body.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats and adds richness.
Flour
Stabilises the sauce so it stays smooth rather than grainy or separated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth finish and glossy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually while stirring. Pouring the milk in all at once or letting the mixture overheat can scramble the egg and cause the cheese to clump or turn grainy. Adding it slowly and stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, potato, flour, egg, 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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