Welsh rarebit bread and butter and occasionally with the vinegar from pickled beetroot. 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 (Romance-speaker). 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
Welsh rarebit calf prepared after the recipe of a she-banker." In H. G. Wells's 1898 short story "The Man Who Could Work Miracles (story)" Mr. Fotheringay helps himself to a couple of Welsh rarebits "out of vacancy". The comic strip "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend", by Winsor McCay, featured the fantastic dreams that various characters had because they ate a Welsh rarebit before going to bed. In "Gomer, the Welsh Rarebit Fiend", Season 3 Episode 24 of "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.", indulging in Welsh rarebit causes Gomer (and later Sgt. Carter) to sleepwalk. In the Neil Simon play Plaza Suite, Act I character