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Welsh Rarebit

A baked cheese mixture served over crackers or toast.

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

  1. Cut the cream cheese into small pieces and place it in a chafing dish before lighting the lamp.

  2. Stir the cheese until it begins to melt, then add the butter.

  3. Once smooth, add the beaten eggs and cream, stirring continuously until smooth and at the desired consistency.

  4. Season with salt, white pepper, and cayenne or Tabasco.

Serve

  1. Serve on crackers or 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. White pepper + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich base that forms the body of the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the cheese mixture as they set gently with the heat, giving it body.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, loose texture to the melted cheese.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the melted cheese turn silky and glossy.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and cream. Eggs are proteins that set when heated, so stirring constantly over gentle heat keeps them smooth; if they get too hot they can scramble and turn the sauce grainy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, butter, egg, cream, 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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