Skip to main content
Main

Welsh Rarebit

A melted cheese and mustard mixture served hot over toast or wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the cheese in a chafing dish or double boiler.

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

  3. Add the butter in pieces and the milk.

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

  5. Add the 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 the sauce and provides the main body and rich flavour.
Egg
Thickens the cheese mixture as it cooks and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, glossy texture as the cheese melts.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a creamy, pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Add the egg to the melted cheese. Egg proteins set when heated, so the cheese should be fully melted and the heat moderate. Stirring the well-beaten egg in gently and cooking briefly thickens the sauce smoothly without curdling or scrambling it.

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.

More welsh rarebit recipes

Tomato 3 See all 354 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes