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Welsh Rarebit

A savory cheese sauce made with butter, milk, mustard, egg, and cheese, served hot 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 sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add a few grains of pepper, salt, and mustard.

  3. Stir in the cheese and melt it.

  4. Once melted, add the milk and beaten egg.

  5. Stir until thick and creamy.

Serve

  1. Pour over very hot toast or wafers and serve immediately.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + cheesetop 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 to give it body, richness, and its main savoury flavour.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, giving it a creamy, spoonable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that loosens the cheese and makes the sauce smooth and pourable.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and helps the cheese melt smoothly.
Mustard
Adds a sharp note that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stir until thick and creamy. The beaten egg thickens as it warms, but too much heat makes its proteins tighten and curdle. Keeping the double boiler gentle and stirring constantly gives a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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