Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Welsh Rarebit
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a double boiler.
Add the cheese and cream to the melted butter.
Mix the mustard, celery salt, and cayenne pepper together, then add to the cheese mixture.
When the mixture begins to thicken, stir in the beaten egg and lemon juice.
Serve
Serve hot on buttered toast.
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.
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Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,169 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,467 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together16,012 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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, savoury body and flavour.
- Egg
- Sets with gentle heat to thicken the sauce and give it body.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness so the cheese melts into a smooth sauce.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness and helps the cheese melt smoothly.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the rich cheese flavour.
The step that matters
Stir in the egg at the thickening stage. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Keeping the heat gentle, as a double boiler does, lets the egg thicken the sauce smoothly.
“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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