Replies

WIKI——The first recorded reference to the dish was “Welsh rabbit” in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown.[5]

There is some suggestion that Welsh Rabbit derives from a South Wales Valleys staple, in which a generous lump of cheese is placed into a mixture of beaten eggs and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper, and baked in the oven until the egg mixture has firmed and the cheese has melted. Onion may be added and the mixture would be eaten with bread and butter and occasionally with the vinegar from pickled beetroot.[16][17]

Welsh
The word Welsh may have been adopted because it carries a now-archaic sense in English to mean “foreign, non-native” - an etymological phenomenon seen in its ultimate ancestor, the Proto-Germanic walhaz (”foreigner”) and many of its descendants like the dated sense of German welsch (Romance-speaker).[18] It is also possible that the dish was attributed to the Welsh because they were considered particularly fond of cheese, as evidenced by Andrew Boorde in his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1542), when he wrote “I am a Welshman, I do love cause boby, good roasted cheese.”[19] In Boorde’s account, “cause boby” is the Welsh caws pobi, meaning “baked cheese”, but whether it implies a recipe like Welsh rarebit is a matter of speculation.

Rarebit
Jielbeaumadier welsh 2010.jpg
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”. The word rarebit has no other use than in Welsh rabbit.[5][20]

“Eighteenth-century English cookbooks reveal that it was then considered to be a luscious supper or tavern dish, based on the fine cheddar-type cheeses and the wheat bread [...] . Surprisingly, it seems there was not only a Welsh Rabbit, but also an English Rabbit, an Irish and a Scotch Rabbit, but nary a rarebit.”[21]

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)”.[22]

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....”[23]

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.”[24]