Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 30 July 2005

A Lexicographer writes

issue 30 July 2005

‘It’s a Welsh rare bit,’ said my husband carefully, staring at some toasted cheese on toast. What, I asked him, would a ‘rare bit’ be like that wasn’t Welsh? He was unable to come up with a satisfactory answer.

It is strange that people not only insist on spelling Welsh rabbit as Welsh rarebit, but also think that by doing so they are performing some sort of explanatory task.

Dear old Hannah Glasse knew all about it. ‘To make a Welch-Rabbit,’ she says in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), ‘Toast the Bread on both Sides, then toast the Cheese on one Side, and lay it on the Toast, and with a hot Iron brown the other side.’

It is of interest that this is identical to her recipe for Scotch Rabbit, except that here she directs that the cheese be toasted on both sides.

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