In the 1950s British restaurants offered a dish which they listed as 'Italian rarebit'. What is it generally called?

Pizza? (Welsh)

Recipe

Italian pizza, indeed.The reason for calling it 'rarebit' was that it had a base with melted cheese on.No customers would know what pizza was,and this description was as close as the restaurateurs could get to give them some idea of what to expect.

By the way, what is called Welsh rarebit in Mozart's link is most odd.Walnuts?Apples?Broccoli? . It's not a dish for four: it's made in individual portions, one piece of toast per person and it consists of some hard cheese, sliced or grated, mixed with a little mustard then grilled (US 'broiled'?) on toast.

But where's the rabbit? The O.U.D. says that 'Welsh rabbit' was the original term, dating from 1725. 'Welsh rarebit ' came along in 1785, as an 'etymologizing alternative ' to W. rabbit.

But neither one involves a rabbit.

One might suspect that the usage of 'Welsh rabbit' was a bit ironic, like 'Mock Duck'; well, not exactly ironic, because "mock duck" comes right out and says it; but you see what I mean.

Except that snaring rabbits cannot have been at all hard in those days, since all gardeners cheered the snarers on; so that a rabbit dish would have been very economical.

So I'd still like to find out the history of the names, but suspect it's lost forever.

Well Fred, I just want to tell you that we never knew it as Welsh Rarebit in the part of England where I grew up. There it was always known as Welsh Rabbit!
So I checked with Wikipedia on the matter,and here's what they had to say:

"The OED establishes that the original name of the food was "Welsh rabbit", and mentions "Welsh rarebit" only as an "etymologizing alteration of [the preceding]. There is no evidence of the independent use of rarebit". The source is not exactly known, but most likely was originally a slur. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was common in England to use the adjective "Welsh" for things of inferior quality, especially if these had been substituted for something better."

As for Italian Rarebit, or Rabbit, I never even tasted pizza until I left home at 18..because pizza was "foreign" food and, "what's wrong with good, plain English food?"

quote:

"what's wrong with good, plain English food?"

I ask that question quite often, as I am sure others have, and still have not gotten a satisfactory answer!

Might also shed some light on why we closed the link to "Karrow's Cookbook".

Dancer says: "... we never knew it as Welsh Rarebit in the part of England where I grew up. There it was always known as Welsh Rabbit!...
As for Italian Rarebit, or Rabbit, I never even tasted pizza until I left home at 18..because pizza was "foreign" food and, 'what's wrong with good, plain English food?' "

Well, as a lumpy farm girl who left home at 17 and went to the sophisticated city of Montreal at age 17, I was introduced to Chicago Pizza by a co-worker, a beautiful young French Canadian woman named Blanche. She couldn't believe I didn't know what pizza was. Let alone Chicago pizza.