Rarebit, Welsh rarebit, or Welsh rabbit (the original name, dating from the 18th century), is traditionally a sauce made from a mixture of cheese and butter, poured over toasted bread which has been buttered. In current popular use, it can be simply slices of cheese placed on toasted bread and melted by heat from above in a grill or salamander (in North America termed a broiler).Variants include the addition of ale, mustard, and ground cayenne pepper or ground paprika; also Worcestershire sauce, cracked black pepper (mainly France), ground white pepper (mostly in southern English counties) and jalapeño pepper (some parts of Latin America and any part of the West Indies) may be added, as may be tomato ketchup and brown sauce. The sauce may also be made by blending cheese into a sauce béchamel (a Mornay sauce). Some recipes for Welsh rabbit have become textbook savoury dishes listed by culinary authorities including Escoffier, Saulnier, Hering and others, who tend to use the form Welsh rarebit, emphasizing that it is not a meat dish.Evidence suggests that there is more than one way to make a rarebit: the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896 has two recipes for 'Welsh Rarebit', one with béchamel, the other with beer, The Constance Spry Cookery Book of 1956 has two recipes for 'Welsh Rabbit', one with flour and one without, Le Guide Culinaire of 1907 has two recipes for 'Welsh Rarebit', one with ale and one without, and the Oxford English Dictionary of 1928 shows two methods of making 'Welsh Rabbit', one with a sauce including ale and the other with just cheese.In the late 1800s a variation of this was called the "slip on". This dish was to be found at "Old Tom's", a chop house in the Wall Street area of New York City. It was a welsh rabbit "poured over apple or minced pie". (See the New York Times article of Dec 30, 1900 .) Another variation is to use poached fillets of sole in place of the toasted bread, in which case it's called "Sole Mornay". In another variation, the bread is fried instead of toasted, and in place of the cheese sauce, beef fillet and foie gras are used; in which case it's called "Tournedos Rossini".Creative application by various chefs has led to the term rarebit being used for a variety of other dishes comprising cheese on toasted bread, a notable example being buck rarebit which has a poached egg added, either on top of or beneath the cheese sauce. Because such variants depend only on the creativity of chefs, the list of names is endless.An English dish, it is normally made with Cheddar cheese, in contrast to the Continental European fondue which classically depends on Swiss cheeses and of which Welsh rabbit was a local variant.