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Cheese Toasted, or a Welsh Rabbit

A simple toasted bread topped with melted cheese and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Toasted, or a Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Toast the slice of bread until golden brown.

  2. Toast the slice of cheese on one side until melted.

  3. Place the melted cheese on the toasted bread.

  4. Use a broiler to brown the cheese further.

  5. Spread mustard over the top before serving.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the crisp, toasted base that holds the melted cheese.
Cheese
Melts and browns to form the rich, savory topping.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that cuts through the richness of the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Brown the cheese under the broiler. Broiling browns the cheese through Maillard reactions, which build flavor, but cheese can burn quickly under high heat, so it needs close watching.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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