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Welsh Rabbit

A cheese toast made with stale bread, strong cheese, butter, milk, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Toast the bread on both sides.

  2. Place it on a hot plate in front of the fire and spread it with butter.

Make the cheese topping

  1. Cut the cheese into small pieces and melt them in a small pan with milk, pepper, salt, and mustard, stirring until smooth.

Serve

  1. Spread the cheese mixture quickly over the buttered toast and serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

Strong cheese
Melts into a smooth sauce and provides the main flavour and richness.
Butter
Coats the toast, adding fat that carries flavour and helps prevent the bread from soaking up the sauce.
Stale bread
Forms the base; drier bread toasts well and holds the topping without going soggy.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese so it becomes smooth rather than stringy or grainy.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese mixture. Cheese set over high heat turns grainy or stringy because its proteins tighten and separate from the fat. Melting it gently with milk and stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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