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September 3rd is National Welsh Rarebit Day, a dish that should be called Welsh rabbit.
A beloved comfort food in Wales, which originated as supper, it’s also delicious as a lunch or brunch dish.
Take a bite: Consider rarebit vs. rabbit, enjoy the recipe, and discover why someone changed the name because he felt that a dish could not be called “rabbit” if it contained no rabbit.
> What is Welsh rarebit?
> The name “rarebit.”
> The recipe.
> Cheese sauce tips.
> The history of Welsh rarebit.
> Other dishes that don’t contain their “name” ingredient.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The history of cheese.
> The history of Cheddar.
> The different types of cheese: a photo glossary.
> Sourdough bread, an ideal base for Welsh rarebit.
> The year’s 30 cheese holidays.
> The year’s 28+ sandwich holidays.
1. WHAT IS WELSH RAREBIT?
Welsh rarebit is far more than melted cheese on toast. It even has its own food holiday: September 3rd.
The beloved Welsh dish consists of a slice of hearty toast topped with a rich cheese sauce, usually made with sharp Cheddar.
Into the sauce goes ale or beer, mustard, and seasonings such as Worcestershire sauce or cayenne. The cheese sauce is poured over toasted bread, then goes under the broil to get bubbling and golden (photo #2).
The result is a comfort-food supper: crisp at the edges, molten in the middle, and substantial enough to turn a few basic ingredients into something memorable.
Welsh rarebit began life in print as Welsh rabbit. The folklore is that when a husband went out hunting and failed to catch a rabbit for dinner, the wife had to use cheese and bread to put food on the table.
Welsh rabbit is close to fondue, but rather than dipping bread in a communal pot, the molten cheese is poured over the bread.
You can also think of it as an open-face grilled cheese sandwich, elevated enough to be dinner.
2. THE NAME RAREBIT
There is no evidence that “rarebit” was the original name of the dish. In 1785, cookbook author Francis Grose described a “Welch rabbit” as “a Welch rare bit,” apparently offering “rare bit” as an explanation of the name.
But that wording may itself be an attempt to rationalize an already puzzling expression. It’s a humble dish, not exactly a rare bit (i.e., a choice morsel).
The dish was first recorded as Welsh rabbit in 1725 and it appears in Hannah Glasse’s 1747 cookbook; the altered form Welsh rarebit appears later, around 1781.
No one knows exactly why the name changed. It may have been an effort to clarify that the dish contained no meat, or simply to fix a name that seemed too absurd to take literally.
Whatever the reason, rarebit never became a general culinary term; its only usage is in the name Welsh rarebit.
Later commentators often reversed the direction and claimed that rabbit was the corruption of rarebit, not vice versa. However, the earlier printed evidence points to rabbit.
As Henry Watson Fowler (1858—1933), an English lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language, famously put it in 1926:
“Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.”
It captures the central point: The absurdity of “Welsh rabbit” was probably deliberate, while “Welsh rarebit” looks like a later attempt to make the name sound logical.
[6] A Welsh rarebit topped with sliced tomatoes isn’t a stretch from our basic Cheddar-and-tomato grilled cheese (photo © Suzy Hazelwood | Pexels).
3. RECIPE: WELSH RAREBIT
While the classic recipe is made with sharp Cheddar, you can use any semi-hard cheese, or a blend. Like fondue, Welsh rabbit is a great way to use up scraps of cheese.
Beer adds richness and flavor. If you don’t want to use alcohol, use a good non-alcoholic beer; or substitute chicken or vegetable broth.
Some older recipes include an egg yolk; this one doesn’t.
Ingredients For 4 Servings
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup dark ale or other beer
- 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 2 cups sharp Cheddar, shredded
- 4 slices sourdough or country-style bread
- Optional: sliced tomato, bacon
- Optional garnishes: fresh snipped chives or thyme
- Optional: fried or poached egg (this is called a buck rabbit or golden buck rabbit)
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[1] The humble Welsh rarebit—cheese sauce on toast—makes a tasty lunch or dinner (photo © The Nibble).
[2] The cheese gets bubbly and brown under the broiler (photo © Richard L | Pexels).
[3] A sturdy piece of Italian bread holds up this rarebit, topped with microgreens and accompanied by tomato relish and a glass of dark ale (photo © Jonathan Hidalgo | Pexels).
[4] Dress it up with a mixed garnish: here, a macédoine (small dice) of red bell pepper, chili flakes, minced herbs, and frizzled onions (photo © Nadin Sh | Pexels).
[5] Fancy schmancy: a rarebit surrounded by cherry tomatoes, topped with baby arugula, and crowned with a frico (photo © Larysa Stratiichuck | Pexels).
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*You can use a different bread, but a thick, sturdy, crusty artisanal loaf works best here. You need bread that won’t get soggy.
Preparation
1. MELT the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When the butter is sizzling, whisk in the flour and cook for a minute, stirring until smooth (you have just created a roux: equal parts flour and fat used as a base and thickening agent).
2. STIR in the ale. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir for two minutes, or until it thickens.
3. REDUCE the heat and slowly whisk in the ale; there should be no lumps. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, mustard, paprika, cayenne, and salt.
4. STIR in the cheese with a spatula, continuing to stir until it is completely melted and the sauce is smooth. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl to slightly cool and thicken (if you have a pitcher, use that: It makes pouring the cheese sauce over the toast easy).
5. PREHEAT the broiler. Separately, toast the bread.
6. PLACE the toast on a heatproof pan. If you’re using the optional tomato and/or bacon, place them on top of the toast. Pour the cheese sauce over each slice of toast. Broil until bubbly and browned. Garnish with the optional herbs and serve immediately.
Variations
The first-known printed recipe appears in 1747, in The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse. She offers four variations:
- Welch rabbit: toasted bread with slices of melted cheese and mustard.
- English rabbit: toasted bread soaked in red wine† with slices of melted cheese.
- English rabbit: toasted bread soaked in red and white wine† with slices of melted cheese and mustard.
- Scotch rabbit: toasted bread with slices of melted cheese.
Additionally, there are:
- Blushing bunny, made with tomato (or tomato soup/ketchup) added to the cheese sauce, giving it a pinkish-orange blush.
- Golden buck rabbit (or simply, buck rabbit), topped with a poached egg.
- Yorkshire buck rabbit, with bacon added.
We invite you to create your own rabbit. Our neighbor first puts ‘nduja, a spicy sausage spread, on the toast. When we don’t have a fresh tomato, we use sautéed mushrooms and onions.
If you want to host a rarebit brunch, lay out a variety of toppings and let participants customize their own.
[7] A “buck rabbit,” also called a golden buck rabbit (a buck is a male rabbit) is rarebit topped with a fried or poached egg (photo © Nadin Sh | Pexels).
4. CHEESE SAUCE TIPS
The first requirement when melting cheese is to prevent it from becoming greasy (from separating) or clumpy. The key is low heat.
- Shred, grate, or finely chop the cheese rather than adding large pieces.
- Use a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
- Heat a splash of milk or cream in the saucepan over low heat until steamy.
- Gradually stir in the shredded cheese a bit at a time.
- Stir continuously, preferably with a whisk, so cheese does not settle and overheat on the pan bottom.
- Keep the heat low and stir gently until the cheese completely blends into a smooth sauce.
We’ve found no meaningful difference among various suggested stirring patterns—zigzag, circular, or always in one direction. The important thing is to keep the sauce moving.
5. THE HISTORY OF WELSH RAREBIT
Welsh rarebit began life in print as Welsh rabbit, a name first recorded in 1725—although the dish has never contained rabbit.
The later term “rarebit,” which appears in the late 18th century, seems to have been an attempt to make sense of a deliberately absurd old name.
One enduring (and endearing) piece of folklore says the meal was what a Welsh household ate when the hunter came home without a rabbit. Having no meat, the wife pulled together bread and cheese for supper.
The dish belongs to a very old British tradition of eating roasted or melted cheese with bread. Wales had a strong dairy culture, and cheese was a practical, sustaining food: it preserved milk and supplied protein in places and seasons where fresh meat was less dependable.
A Welsh term, caws pobi—“baked” or “roasted cheese”—appears in 16th-century references. That establishes a cultural connection with Welsh melted-cheese dishes, although it does not prove a direct, uninterrupted line to the particular recipe now called Welsh rarebit.
1785, the recipe was familiar enough to appear in Hannah Glasse’s influential cookbook, “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy” (1747), which gives recipes for Welsh rabbit as well as English and Scotch rabbits.
The term “Welsh rarebit” came later, often dated to 1785. “Rarebit” has no established independent meaning outside this dish.
Thus, most modern dictionaries and food historians treat it as a later alteration of “rabbit,” perhaps prompted by diners or publications who took the joke too literally and assumed the original name must be an error.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, “rarebit” became common on menus and in cookbooks, while many writers defended “rabbit” as the older and wittier form. We concur; although Welsh rarebit is now the more usual menu name.
6. OTHER DISHES THAT DON’T CONTAIN THEIR “NAME” INGREDIENT
There’s a rich culinary tradition of dishes named after ingredients they do not actually contain.
Many originated as humorous, satirical, or frugal substitutions—often mocking regional diets or making a modest pantry meal sound grand—while others stem from historical culinary shorthand or visual mimicry. Consider:
- Boston cream pie is not a pie, but rather a two-layer sponge cake filled with vanilla custard and topped with chocolate glaze. It was named during an era when cakes and pies were baked in the same shallow tins.
- Cheesecake is not a cake, but a single-crust custard pie. The custard is flavored with cream cheese.
- Grasshopper pie contains no insects, taking its name solely from the bright green color imparted by crème de menthe (many grasshopper species are green).
- >Head cheese is not a dairy cheese but a seasoned meat terrine or aspic made from the cooked edible parts of a pig or calf head.
- Mock apple pie, popularized on the back of Ritz cracker boxes during the Great Depression, contains no apples. The buttery crackers are soaked in a syrup of sugar, water, lemon juice, cream of tartar, and cinnamon, meant to replicate the tender texture of spiced apples.
- Mock turtle soup was created in the 18th century as an economical substitute for green sea turtle soup. It uses calf’s head, brains, and organ meats to approximate the gelatinous texture and flavor of actual turtle.
- Plum pudding (also called Christmas pudding) contains no plums. In 17th-century English, “plum” was a generic term for dried grapes (raisins), which form the base of the steamed fruit cake. (In Britain, “pudding” refers to dessert.)
- Rocky Mountain oysters, sometimes called prairie oysters, are breaded and deep-fried bull calf testicles.
- Scotch woodcock contains no game bird whatsoever. It’s simply scrambled eggs enriched with butter and cream, served on toast spread with anchovy paste or Gentleman’s Relish‡”.
- Sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread, but are the thymus or pancreas glands of young calves or lambs.
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†In this older preparation, the bread was toasted on both sides, placed in a dish, and wine was poured over it to absorb—enough to flavor and soften the bread, but not enough to make it collapse. The wine-absorbed bread was covered with thinly sliced cheese, often laid on quite thickly; and the dish was put before a fire or under a broiler until the cheese melted, browned, and bubbled.
The initial toasting helped the bread retain some structure, while the wine softened the interior and gave it a rich, savory flavor. The finished texture would be crisp or browned on top, tender and wine-scented underneath, with melted cheese binding everything together.
If you want to use wine, brush or spoon it over the toast, one or two tablespoons per slice, before topping with cheese and broiling.
‡Gentleman’s Relish has bit the dust: The iconic 198-year-old Patum Peperium anchovy spread was retired in early 2026 by its manufacturer, AB World Foods, due to declining retail sales. It was a strongly flavored anchovy paste made primarily from salted anchovies blended with butter and a “secret mixture” of herbs and spices. Intensely salty, savory, and fishy, it was typically spread thinly on toast or crackers.
The closest currently available alternative appears to be Fortnum & Mason’s Fortnum’s Relish, an anchovy-based spread in the same pungent, highly seasoned tradition. It’s flavored with dill, garlic, and Sarawak pepper, so it will not be identical to Patum Peperium, but it should give Scotch woodcock the required salty, savory underpinning.
Or make your own with this quick recipe: Mash or blend anchovy fillets with softened butter, a small amount of fine breadcrumbs, and pinches of cayenne, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and pepper. This recreates the buttery, spiced character that regular anchovy paste lacks.
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