Cheese on toast or grilled with the cheese), brown sauce or ketchup. Pickled cucumber, Branston pickle, fried tomatoes, fried eggs, Worcestershire sauce and baked beans are also common. Another common variation is to add something to the toast before applying the cheese, such as tomato, or a thin layer of spread Marmite, Vegemite (in Australia), cream spread, mustard or tomato ketchup. Recipe books and internet articles tend to elaborate on the basics, adding ingredients and specifying accompaniments to make more interesting reading. Consequently, published recipes seldom deal with the most basic form of the dish and frequently refer to the similar dish of
Welsh rarebit this; what is more, Ben Jonson died almost a century before the term Welsh rabbit is first attested. According to the American satirist Ambrose Bierce, the continued use of "rarebit" was an attempt to rationalise the absence of rabbit, writing in his 1911 "Devil's Dictionary": "RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad in the hole is really not a toad, and that "ris de veau à la financière" is not the smile of a