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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce 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

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated cheese and stir until melted.

  3. Gradually mix in the ale, milk, or consomme.

  4. Stir in the mustard and salt. Continue stirring until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over slices of hot buttered 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. 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide the main flavor and rich, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the cheese melt smoothly.
Ale or consomme
Thins the cheese mixture so it pours and spreads evenly over toast.
Milk
Adds liquid that keeps the cheese sauce smooth and loosens its texture.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Stir the cheese gently until smooth. Cheese proteins can tighten and turn grainy or stringy if overheated or stirred too hard. Keeping heat moderate and stirring steadily while liquid is added lets the emulsion form a smooth, pourable sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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