What's in a Name, Welsh Rarebit

It is cheese on toast with added ingredients. When it was devised in the 18th century, the English (by then well-established in their teasing of the Welsh) jokingly called it Welsh Rabbit - as a Welshman, supposedly too poor to have meat, had to eat cheese instead.

The earliest reference can be traced to 1725 and the diary of a poet called John Byrom who wrote, "I did not eat of cold beef, but of Welsh rabbit and stewed cheese."

Sixty years later, the rarebit popped up in Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: ‘A Welsh rabbit is bread and cheese roasted, i.e. a Welsh rare bit.’