Skip to main content
Main

Methodist Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with butter, cornstarch, milk, cheese, salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, served over soft toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  3. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

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

Serve

  1. Serve over 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 flavour and creamy body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk or cream so the sauce coats the toast instead of running off.
Milk or thin cream
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into and the cornstarch thickens.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and gives the sauce a smooth, mellow base.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch in the milk or cream. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the liquid is heated enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Stirring while it cooks prevents lumps, and the sauce should be thick before the cheese goes in.

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.

More welsh rarebit recipes

Tomato 3 See all 354 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes