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Toasted Cheese, or Welsh Rarebit

A sandwich of buttered bread topped with cheese, mustard, and pepper, toasted until the cheese melts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Toasted Cheese, or Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the slices of bread.

  2. Place slices of cheese on top of the buttered bread.

  3. Sprinkle with mustard and pepper to taste.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast under a broiler until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

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

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

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

Bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the melted cheese topping.
Cheese
Melts into a creamy, savory topping that browns under the heat.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the bread toast golden and rich in flavor.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Toast under the broiler until just melted and bubbly. Broiler heat can scorch the bread or burn the cheese quickly. Watch closely and stop once the cheese melts and bubbles, so it stays smooth and the bread stays crisp rather than dry or blackened.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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