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Welsh Rarebit

A cheese, mustard, wine, and egg sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Grease a saucepan with butter and add the chopped cheese.

  2. Stir the cheese over low heat until it melts.

  3. Beat the eggs in a bowl and stir them into the melted cheese.

  4. Add the mustard and wine, stirring for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread and spread the cheese mixture over it.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 its rich, creamy body and savory flavor.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the cheese mixture and giving it a custard-like texture.
Wine
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the cheese and eggs.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the cheese.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the cheese melt smoothly in the pan.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the melted cheese. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keep the heat gentle and the stirring steady.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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