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Welsh Rare-bit

A toasted bread topped with a creamy cheese sauce made from cream cheese, milk, mustard, and spices.

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 Rare-bit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the cream cheese into small pieces or grate it if hard.

  2. Put the cheese and milk in a double boiler.

  3. Toast the bread and keep it hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper, add the egg, and beat well.

  2. When the cheese is melted, stir in the egg mixture and cook for 2 minutes until it thickens slightly, but do not let it curdle.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast.

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. Cream cheese + buttertop 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. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  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

Cream cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it a rich, smooth body and savory flavor.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set when gently heated, giving it body.
Cream or milk
Provides liquid that melts with the cheese, keeping the sauce smooth and pourable.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the cheese.
Toast
Serves as the base that holds the sauce and soaks up some of its liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg into the cheese sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the sauce gets too hot or cooks too long it can curdle and turn grainy. Keeping it gentle over a double boiler and stopping once it thickens slightly keeps it smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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