Welsh Rabbit

[Woods Dweller]

I allways thought that welsh rabbit had rabbit in it. Someone told me that welsh rabbit had no rabbit in it. Here is a recipe of welsh rabbit and a little history of welsh rabbit.

Welsh Rabbit

Ingredients:
1 cup beer
2 teaspoons mustard powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1½ cups grated Cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Salt to taste
4 to 6 tomato slices
8 to 12 slices (½ inch thick), toasted French or Italian bread

Instructions:
1.Preheat a broiler. Place the beer, mustard, cayenne and Worcestershire sauce in a saucepan, and heat over medium heat until boiling. Slowly whisk in the cheese, making sure each addition is melted before adding the next. Add the butter, and whisk until smooth. Season with salt to taste, and set aside.

2.Place the tomato slices on the rack of a broiler pan, and broil for 1 minute, or until lightly browned.

3.To serve, place the toast slices on the bottom of an ovenproof gratin dish or in individual gratin dishes. Pour the cheese over the toast, and then top with the tomato slices. Place under the broiler and broil until the cheese is bubbly and brown. Serve immediately.

Note: The components of the dish can be prepared up to a few hours in advance and kept at room temperature. Reheat the cheese until hot, whisking until it is smooth, before the final broiling.

History
Rarebit
The word rarebit is a corruption of rabbit, "Welsh rabbit" being first recorded in 1725 and the variant "Welsh rarebit" being first recorded in 1785 by Francis Grose. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'Welsh rarebit' is an "etymologizing alteration. There is no evidence of the independent use of rarebit".

Michael Quinion writes: "Welsh rabbit is basically cheese on toast (the word is not 'rarebit' by the way, that's the result of false etymology; 'rabbit' is here being used in the same way as 'turtle' in 'mock-turtle soup', which has never been near a turtle, or 'duck' in 'Bombay duck', which was actually a dried fish called bummalo)".

The entry in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is "Welsh rabbit, Welsh rarebit" and states: "When Francis Grose defined Welsh rabbit in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785, he mistakenly indicated that rabbit was a corruption of rarebit. It is not certain that this erroneous idea originated with Grose...."

In his 1926 edition of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the grammarian H. W. Fowler states a forthright view: "Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong."
The word rarebit has no other use than in Welsh rabbit and "rarebit" alone has come to be used in place of the original name.

 

[gearheart]

So, the question remains, is Welsh Rabbit a tongue in cheek jab at the Welsh, Implying that they are lousy hunters? :haha:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

It's not a commentary on the Welsh for there is also:

Scotch Rabbit, Toast a piece of bread very nicely on both sides, butter it, cut a slice of cheeese about as big as the bread, toast it on both sides, and lay it on the bread.

(according to Mrs. Glasse Welch Rabbit (her spelling) has the cheese laid on the toast, then the cheese is toasted, and mustard is sometimes added on top of the cheese.)

English Rabbit, Toast a slice of bread brown on both sides, then lay it in a plate before the fire, pour a glass of red wine over it, and let it soak the wine up; then cut some [cheddar] cheese very thin, and lay it very thick over the bread, and put it in a tin oven before the fire, and it will be toasted and browned presently. Serve it very hot.

from The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Simple by Hannah Glasse

And then we should note that spotted dog does not contain dog, nor does spotted dick contain... :shocked2: ..., and toad-in-the-hole does not contain toad, star gazie pie is a fish-pie, sweet-breads are neither bread nor sweet, and so there is a whole tradition of naming this or that dish as something it's really not. :grin:

LD

 

[tenngun]

Some times things get names just because they sound close to the origanal.The 5 point gang "Dead Rabits" came from the Irish slang for toygh guy sounded close to dead rabit in english. Ojib sonds real close to chip in english so ojibwa became chipawa.I spect cheese on toast started out with a name that sounded close to rabit.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

That's a good point..., Jerusalem artichokes came from the Italian girasole, gee-rah-soh-ley, which means something like "sunflower" in English as the Jerusalem artichoke is a type of sunflower that forms a bulb that is edible.

LD

 

[Short Arm]

Cwningen Cymru Rabbit

bread and cheese rhoddweh

 

[hawkeye2]

When I was a child I was promptly corrected by my mother every time I tried to call it Welsh Rabbit and was told that it was Welsh Rarebit! Till this topic began I don't recall ever hearing it called Rabbit after we grew out of it. Woods Dweller's post is quite informative but if you grew up where I did it was rarebit, right or wrong.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

to expound on Dave's post when Lewis and Clark made it across the last mountain range before the Pacific they were near starved when they met the native ndns. they fed L&C men with 'bulbs' which were 'sunchoke tubers' that grow prolifically in that area.
their account of the tremendous gas and stomach discomfort the men suffered from gorgeing on these tubers is noted in L&C's journal.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

well..., when you go from a diet of mostly protein to a huge meal of high fiber..., this is exactly what happens..., and don't ask me why I am so sure of this! :shocked2:

LD

 

[Woods Dweller]

Well! Weather one calls it Welsh Rarebit or Welsh Rabbit. I made it and ate it for the first time last week and liked it. :thumbsup:
Good way to make hard stale bread taste good.

 

[Billnpatti]

I read somewhere that the origin of the name Welsh Rabbit came from a tongue in cheek name for the dish. :hmm: The name came about because all game was the property of the land owner who was usually royalty. The penalty for poaching was rather severe :cursing: so the peasants had little game meat to eat. They came up with the recipe for toasting bread and melting cheese on it and called it Welsh Rabbit because it was as close as they could legally come to eating rabbit that belonged to the land owner.

Take the story for what it is worth because I don't know if it is true :idunno: or the product of an active imagination. :yakyak: