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Methodist Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with butter, cornstarch, milk, and mustard, served over soft toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Methodist Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch and add the milk or cream; cook for 2 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

  2. Season with salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Serve the mixture on soft 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 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 its rich, savoury body and flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk or cream so the cheese sauce clings to the toast.
Milk or thin cream
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into, adding moisture and smoothness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base before the liquid goes in.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Add the cheese and stir until melted. Cheese turns stringy or grainy if it overheats or boils. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring steadily lets the proteins melt into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, cheese, 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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