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Welsh Rarebit, or Toasted Cheese

A toasted bread topped with melted cheddar cheese, butter, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Rarebit, or Toasted Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the rounds of bread and remove the crusts.

  2. Butter the toast and place it in a Dutch oven.

Melt and serve

  1. Hang the cheese slices on the hooks of the oven above the toast.

  2. Allow the cheese to melt onto the toast.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheddar cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,436 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cheddar cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

American cheddar cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich topping and supplies most of the flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the toast taste savoury and feel soft.
Bread
Forms the base that holds the melted cheese.

The step that matters

Allow the cheese to melt onto the toast. Cheese melts best with gentle, indirect heat. Too much heat tightens the proteins and separates the fat, leaving the topping greasy and grainy instead of smooth.

“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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