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Welsh Rare-bit

A cheese sauce made with butter, cheese, milk, mustard, pepper, and salt, served over toasted bread.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the cheese and milk, stirring until the cheese is melted.

  3. Season with mustard, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg, but do not allow the mixture to boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over hot buttered toast and 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

Cheshire cheese
Melts into a smooth sauce and provides the main savory flavor.
Egg
Thickens the cheese sauce as it gently cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cheese melt smoothly into the milk.
Milk
Loosens the cheese into a pourable sauce with a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg without boiling. Egg proteins set when heated, so boiling the mixture can curdle it and leave it grainy instead of smooth and thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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