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Welsh Rabbit

A cheese and egg mixture served on toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a double boiler, melt the butter.

  2. Add the cheese and stir while melting.

  3. When almost melted, mix the milk with the eggs and add to the cheese along with the seasonings.

  4. Continue heating until the cheese melts and the egg thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve on small slices of toast or crackers.

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

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

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 to provide the main body, richness and savory flavor.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat, giving it a smooth, spoonable body.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a smooth sauce and adds moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the cheese melt smoothly in the double boiler.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Continue heating until the cheese melts and the egg thickens. Eggs set at around 160°F, so heat must stay gentle and steady in a double boiler. Too much heat can curdle the eggs and make the sauce grainy, while too little leaves it thin.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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