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Welsh Rare-bit

A Welsh cheese toast topped with a hot cheese sauce made from grated cheese, milk or porter, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Rare-bit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread slices until golden, then butter them generously.

  2. Moisten the toast with a few teaspoons of boiling water and keep warm.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk or porter to a boil.

  2. Add the grated cheese and stir constantly until fully melted.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until creamy, then quickly stir them into the cheese mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over the hot toast and serve immediately on a warm plate.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide the main flavour and creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cheese sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Milk or porter
Liquid base that melts the cheese smoothly; porter adds malty depth.
Bread slices
Sturdy base that holds the sauce and soaks up its flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the cheese mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Beating them until creamy and stirring quickly into the sauce, off intense heat, helps them thicken it smoothly.

“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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