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Welsh Rarebit

A savory cheese sauce served over toast or zephyrettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 saucepan.

  2. Add the corn starch and stir until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the cream and cook for two minutes.

  4. Add the cream cheese and stir until melted.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve over zephyrettes or bread toasted on one side, pouring the rarebit over the untoasted side.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Corn + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Thin cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the sauce and helps it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream and cook for two minutes. Adding the cream slowly into the cornstarch mixture keeps it from clumping, and cooking it briefly lets the starch swell fully so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, 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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