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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce with mustard and paprika served over toast or crackers.

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 sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated cheese, mustard, salt, and paprika; stir until nearly melted.

  3. Pour in the scalded milk or cream and mix well.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over 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. 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. 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

Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide rich flavour and a smooth, creamy body.
Egg
Thickens the sauce slightly and adds richness when stirred in gently at the end.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cheese melt smoothly into the sauce.
Scalded milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that loosens the cheese into a pourable, creamy sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to a very hot sauce or boiling it can curdle or scramble the egg. Adding it last, over gentle heat, lets it thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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