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How to Imake a Welsh Rare-bit

A creamy cheese toast topped with mustard, cayenne, butter, and egg.

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

How to Imake a Welsh Rare-bit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the cream cheese and cream together in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, butter, and egg (or egg yolks).

  3. Stir until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the 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. Cream + buttertop 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 rich, smooth base that gives the sauce its body.
Cream
Adds moisture and loosens the sauce so it spreads smoothly.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set, giving it a creamy, binding texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds a sharp flavour that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the sauce. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the mixture is too hot when the egg goes in, it can scramble into lumps. Keep the sauce warm, not boiling, and stir until smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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