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Welsh Rabbit or Rarebit

A cheese-based dish served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Rabbit or Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cheese into small pieces.

  2. Prepare squares of hot, well-buttered toast.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cheese, butter, milk or ale, mustard, and pepper.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it resembles thick cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the cheese mixture over the toast 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. Cheddar cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,436 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheddar cheese + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  5. Cheddar cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together708 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, giving the rarebit its rich, savoury body.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cheese sauce smooth and glossy as it melts.
Milk or ale
Provides liquid that loosens the melted cheese into a pourable sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over low heat. High heat can make cheese seize, turn grainy or oily, or scorch on the pan base. Gentle heat lets the cheese melt evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheddar cheese, butter, milk, 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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