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Welch Rarebit That Never Fails

A cheese sauce made with cream cheese, ale, butter, spices, and eggs, served over toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,747 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Welch Rarebit That Never Fails

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. Pour the ale into a chafing dish and heat thoroughly.

  2. Add the butter and let it melt.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then add the dry mustard and cayenne.

  4. When the mixture boils, add the grated cheese.

  5. Stir continuously until the cheese is thoroughly melted.

  6. Add the well-beaten eggs and stir constantly.

  7. Let the mixture simmer for a short time.

Serve

  1. Serve on 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. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich sauce that gives the rarebit its body and creamy texture.
Old ale
Thins the melted cheese and adds a malty, slightly bitter flavour.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set with heat, giving it a richer body.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and helps the cheese melt evenly.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs thicken by coagulating when heated, so if the mixture is too hot or stirred too little, they can scramble and make the sauce grainy. Stir constantly and keep the heat gentle.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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