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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese-based sauce served hot 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the grated cheese, flour, mustard, salt, Cayenne pepper, and beaten egg.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually add the hot milk to the mixture, stirring continuously.

  2. Cook until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over slices of 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. 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it rich flavor and a thick, creamy body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cheese sauce so it coats the toast instead of running off.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into, giving a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, glossy finish to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Heating the egg-and-cheese mixture gently while stirring keeps the egg from scrambling. Too much heat or too little stirring can curdle the sauce or leave lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, flour, butter, egg, pepper. 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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