Welsh rabbit is a snack dish, also known as toasted cheese or (erroneously) Welsh rarebit. It is one of the simple pleasures of British cuisine. It is made by grating cheese, blending it with beer or a little milk and butter, seasoning (particularly mustard), and spreading the mixture onto hot toast; the whole is then grilled - in the British fashion, i.e. heated briskly from above (called broiling in North America). Classically the cheese used in Welsh rabbit is Cheddar or Double Gloucester.
The origin of the name Welsh rabbit is not exactly known, but most probably is a disguised 'Welsh joke'. It the 17th and 18th century it was common to use the adjective Welsh to mean inferior quality, even implying counterfeit. In a traditional society where even a half-grown stripling could snare a rabbit for the pot, a Welshman was considered (by the English of course), so hopelessly feckless that cheese melted with beer would have to substitute. Victorian and later Recipe books often refer to this dish as Welsh rarebit. This is a silly euphemism, and all dictionaries agree that it derives from an erroneous folk etymology. The first record of the word was in 1725. There is little doubt that rabbit was the original form, with the alternative form rarebit only occurring in 1785.
In parts of the UK today, there is a tendency for the traditional name to be replaced by the more prosaic "cheese on toast" or "toasted cheese", or a jocular reference to "Welsh rarebit". A slice of bread topped with cheese, however, is not a real Welsh rabbit.
There are a number of derivatives. The buck rabbit is a Welsh rabbit with a poached egg on top, the Irish rabbit is topped with with onions, vinegar, herbs and gherkins. There is the Yorkshire rabbit which is topped with both bacon and a poached egg. Other variations include the American rabbit which is a Welsh rabbit topped with whisked egg whites, and the the English rabbit which uses red-wine. A dish Scotch rabbit exists, although this comes close to cheese (preferably Dunlop) on toast.
This dish in some form is also common in other European countries. It is known as Ramequin or Käseschnitte, although the French often use the term Le Welsh, interestingly sometimes associated with Irish cuisine.
