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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce with mustard, eggs, 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: 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 Rarebit

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Mix the grated cheese, mustard, salt, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and rinse the bowl with milk, stirring it into the mixture.

  3. Stir in the butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until the cheese is melted.

  2. Pour the cheese mixture over the toast and serve.

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

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into a smooth sauce that gives the rarebit its main flavour and body.
Eggs
Thicken the mixture as they cook, giving it a creamy, sauce-like texture.
Milk or cream
Loosens the mixture so it spreads smoothly and stays creamy when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler until the cheese is melted. Gentle indirect heat melts the cheese without overheating it. Too much heat can make the cheese oily or cause the egg to scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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