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Welsh Rare-bit

A Welsh cheese toast made with grated cheese, egg yolks, milk or porter, and cayenne pepper, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rare-bit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread slices and butter them generously while hot.

  2. Moisten the toast with a few teaspoons of boiling water and keep warm.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk or porter to a boil.

  2. Add the grated cheese and stir constantly until fully dissolved.

  3. Mix in salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until creamy, then stir them rapidly into the cheese mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over the hot toast and serve immediately on a hot plate.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide the main flavour and a smooth, rich body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cheese mixture and add richness when stirred in gently with heat.
Milk or porter
Forms the liquid base that the cheese melts into, giving the sauce a smooth consistency.
Bread slices
Provide a sturdy base that holds the sauce and absorbs its flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the cheese mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot cheese sauce without being beaten smooth and stirred rapidly, so the sauce stays silky and thickened rather than grainy.

“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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