Name: Welsh Rare-bit
Ingredients: 1 pound cheese; coarse sea salt; black pepper; toast

Why it works: Cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,861 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Welsh Rare-bit

Ingredients

1 pound cheese
coarse sea salt
black pepper
toast

Directions

Prepare the cheese

Cut the cheese into small pieces.
Place the cheese in a dish.
Season the cheese with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Melt and serve

Stir the cheese until melted.
Prepare toast on a hot dish.
Cover the toast slices with the melted cheese.
Serve hot as a relish before dinner.

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.

Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 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