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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with milk, cheese, and eggs served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and add a little salt.

  2. Finely chip the cheese and let it dissolve in the hot milk.

  3. Just before serving, quickly stir in the eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture poured over toast or soda crackers.

  2. Eat immediately.

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that melts the cheese into a smooth sauce.
Cheese
Melts into the hot milk to give the rarebit its body and rich flavour.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs just before serving. Eggs thicken when heated, so if they are added too early or the sauce boils, they can scramble and make the sauce grainy. Adding them at the end, off the heat or on low heat, keeps it smooth.

“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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