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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with butter, ale or milk, seasoned with pepper and mustard, served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cheese thinly and place it in a clean saucepan.

  2. Add butter and porter, ale, or milk according to the cheese quantity.

  3. Season with black pepper and mustard to taste.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir over heat until melted and creamy.

Serve

  1. Pour over hot buttered toast in a fireproof dish.

  2. Brown in the oven if desired, and serve 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 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

Good rich cheese
Melts into the sauce and provides the main flavour and creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cheese melt smoothly without becoming grainy.
Porter, good ale, or new milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a pourable sauce with a mild malty or milky note.
Dry english mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness of the cheese.
Hot buttered toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base for the sauce to soak into.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until melted and creamy. Cheese proteins toughen and separate into greasy strands when overheated, so use gentle, low heat and keep stirring until just smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, milk, 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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