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Welsh-rarebit

A cheese-based sauce with Worcestershire, cayenne, and beer, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh-rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce, cayenne, and salt; stir to combine.

  3. Gradually add the cheese, stirring until it begins to melt.

  4. Slowly mix in the beer, ale, or porter until desired consistency is reached.

  5. Quickly stir in the egg yolk and serve immediately over buttered toast.

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

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

  2. Cheese + beertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone (spice).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into a creamy sauce that forms the body of the rarebit.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the sauce stay smooth.
Beer, ale, or porter
Thins the cheese into a pourable sauce and adds a malty flavour.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a richer texture.

The step that matters

Quickly stir in the egg yolk. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets very hot cheese sauce. Stirring it in quickly, off the strongest heat, spreads it through the sauce so it thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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