Skip to main content
Main

Welsh Rarebit

A cheese sauce made with grated cheese, cream, mustard, butter, salt, pepper, and egg, poured over toasted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Welsh Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the grated cheese in a chafing dish, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the warmed cream or milk and stir until smooth.

  3. Mix in the mustard, salt, pepper, and beaten egg.

  4. Once thickened, pour the mixture over toasted 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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 provide the main flavour and creamy body.
Cream or milk
Loosens the melted cheese into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Beaten egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body that holds on the crackers.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the cheese sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if it gets too hot or is not stirred. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring constantly helps the sauce stay smooth and thicken evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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

More welsh rarebit recipes

Tomato 3 See all 354 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes