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Welsh Rarebit

A toasted bread topped with a melted cheese sauce made with butter, milk, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread until golden brown and hot.

  2. Butter the toasted bread.

  3. Place the buttered bread on a heated platter.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Cut the cheese into small pieces.

  2. Place the cheese pieces in a chafing dish.

  3. Add milk, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper to the cheese.

  4. Heat the mixture over low flame, stirring until the cheese melts and becomes smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over the toasted bread.

  2. 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 that gives the rarebit its rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the buttered toast carry flavor and resist sogginess.
Milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.
Bread
Provides the sturdy base that holds the hot cheese sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the cheese mixture over low flame. Cheese is prone to turning greasy or grainy when overheated, because high heat makes its proteins tighten and separate from the fat. Low, gentle heat with steady stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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