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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

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

  2. Toast the slice of Gloucester cheese on one side and place it on the buttered bread.

  3. Toast the other side of the cheese with a salamander.

  4. Rub mustard over the cheese and serve very 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

Bread
Provides the base and structure that holds the melted cheese.
Gloucester cheese
Melts and browns to form the main filling and flavour of the sandwich.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and gives a rich flavour.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, acidic flavour that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Toasting the cheese side with a salamander. Cheese browns and melts quickly under strong radiant heat, so it can scorch or stay unmelted if the heat or timing is off. Turning the sandwich too late or too early affects both melt and colour.

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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