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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with butter, ale, mustard, and seasoning served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

  3. Gradually add the ale or milk, along with mustard and seasoning to taste.

Serve

  1. Prepare hot buttered toast and pour the cheese mixture over it.

  2. Serve immediately while 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce, providing the rich body and savoury flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the cheese melt smoothly and gives a rich mouthfeel.
Ale
Thins the melted cheese into a pourable sauce and adds a mild malty flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid gradually. Cheese proteins can tighten and turn grainy or stringy if heated too hard or combined too quickly. Adding the ale or milk gradually over gentle heat lets the sauce emulsify into a smooth, pourable consistency.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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