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A Welsh Rabbit

A Welsh rabbit is a toasted bread sandwich with melted Gloucester cheese, mustard, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter one side of the bread.

Make the rabbit

  1. Toast the cheese on one side until melted.

  2. Place the melted cheese side on the buttered bread.

  3. Toast the top with a salamander or hot iron until it spreads over the toast.

  4. Rub made mustard, salt, and pepper on top.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately in a double dish with hot water underneath.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  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

Bread
Provides the base that holds the melted cheese and absorbs its softened fat.
Gloucester cheese
Melts into a smooth, spreadable topping that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly when toasted.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Toasting the top until the cheese spreads. Cheese that is heated too gently stays stiff, while too much heat scorches it. Gentle, even heat lets the cheese melt, soften and spread evenly over the toast.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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