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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with cheddar, cream, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce, served over toast.

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 Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the eggs slightly, then add the mustard, salt, and cayenne.

  2. In the upper part of a double boiler, combine the milk and cheese. Heat until the cheese is melted, then add the butter.

  3. Pour the cheese mixture over the eggs, return to the double boiler, and stir constantly until thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Add Worcestershire sauce and serve over 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. Cheddar cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,436 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cheddar cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together708 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheddar cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it body and rich flavour.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a smooth, custard-like texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture so the cheese melts into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the cheese mixture over the double boiler until thick. Eggs thicken when gently heated but can scramble if they get too hot. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheddar cheese, cream, sauce, 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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