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Welsh Rabbit

A cheese and bread soup made with Gruyere, stale bread crumbs, butter, flour, onions, water, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the layers

  1. Grate the cheese finely and layer it at the bottom of a soup tureen.

  2. Add a layer of stale bread crumbs over the cheese.

  3. Repeat the layering until the cheese is used, filling one-fourth of the tureen.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour and cook until browned.

  3. Add minced onions and cook until browned.

  4. Gradually stir in water and bring to a boil.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Let the soup sit for a couple of minutes to soak the bread and cheese before serving.

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. Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dry gruyere cheese
Melts into the liquid to give the soup its rich, savory body and flavor.
Stale bread
Soaks up the liquid and cheese, giving the dish a thick, spoonable texture.
Butter
Carries fat into the saucepan, enriching the sauce and helping the flour cook.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth as they brown in the butter.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in water and bring to a boil. Adding the water slowly while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gruyere cheese, bread, butter, flour, 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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