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Welsh Rarebit

A hot cheese sauce with mustard, cayenne, butter, milk, and egg, served over toast or wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 rarebit

  1. Place cheese in a chafing dish or double boiler.

  2. Mix mustard, salt, and cayenne; sprinkle over cheese.

  3. Add butter in pieces and milk.

  4. When cheese begins to melt, stir until completely melted.

  5. Add well-beaten egg; stir and cook for a moment longer.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on wafers or 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. 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich sauce that coats the toast or wafers.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body and a creamy set.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the melted cheese silky and glossy.
Milk
Loosens the cheese so it melts into a pourable, smooth sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Add the egg last and keep the heat gentle. Egg proteins set at higher heat and can curdle or scramble, turning the sauce grainy. Adding the well-beaten egg to the melted cheese and stirring briefly keeps it smooth and thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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