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Welsh Rarebit

A melted cheese sauce served over buttered toast, flavored with ale, mustard, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cheese and enough ale or beer to moisten it without making it too thin.

  2. Add the butter and stir continuously until the cheese is perfectly melted.

  3. Stir in salt, pepper, and mustard.

  4. Remove from heat and carefully stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over buttered toast on hot plates and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  4. Beer + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cheese + beertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone (spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich dairy cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide the main body, richness and savoury flavour.
Ale or beer
Thins the melted cheese to a pourable consistency and adds a malty flavour.
Egg
Thickens the sauce gently as it sets with the residual heat, giving it a creamy body.
English mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg in off the heat. Egg proteins set at around 70°C and curdle if overheated, so the pan should be removed from the heat before the beaten egg is stirred in gently.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, beer, butter, pepper, 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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