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Welch Rabbit

A toasted sandwich of bread, Gloucester cheese, butter, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Welch Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the bread on both sides and butter it.

  2. Toast one side of the Gloucester cheese.

  3. Place the toasted cheese on the buttered bread.

Finish and serve

  1. Toast the other side of the cheese with a salamander or broiler.

  2. Rub mustard over the cheese and serve hot, covered.

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

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

  5. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Gloucester cheese
Melts into a creamy topping and browns under heat, giving the sandwich its main flavor.
Bread
Provides a crisp toasted base that holds the melted cheese.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toasted bread brown and taste savory.
Mustard
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the rich, melted cheese.

The step that matters

Toasting the other side of the cheese. The cheese must be heated until it bubbles and browns without drying out or burning. Too little heat leaves it cold and stiff, while too much makes it greasy and scorched, since the proteins and fats in cheese change quickly under high heat.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cheese, 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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