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Cheese Straws
Take one-quarter of a pound of puff paste and half an ounce of Parmesan cheese grated very fine; add a little salt; sprinkle the cheese and salt over the paste and roll it two or three times; then cut into narrow strips and about five inches long. Bake in a slow oven and send to the table hot.
A four-line recipe that assumes you already know how to handle puff paste. The only real decision is the oven, and the original's advice needs interpreting.
- The oven is the hingeA "slow oven" in this period is usually reckoned at roughly 275-325F, which risks drying the strips out before the layers lift. Puff pastry needs steam and speed: 400-425F for 8-12 minutes, until puffed and deep gold. The instruction may reflect an older cook guarding against scorched cheese in an uneven range oven.
- QuantitiesA quarter pound of puff paste is about 115 g, roughly a third to a half of a standard sheet of all-butter frozen puff. Half an ounce of Parmesan is 14 g, around two tablespoons grated fine. That is a restrained hand by modern taste; many modern recipes use twice as much, worked in over two or three turns.
- Parmesan then and nowNineteenth-century British "Parmesan" was an imported hard grating cheese, often older and drier than a young supermarket wedge. Buy a piece of real Parmigiano-Reggiano and grate it on the fine side of a box grater so it disappears into the dough rather than sitting in lumps.
- Rolling it two or three timesThis probably means giving the paste two or three more turns after the cheese is scattered on, so the cheese is laminated between the layers rather than stuck to the surface. Chill the paste between turns if the butter begins to soften.
- CuttingNarrow suggests a quarter to a half inch wide. Five inches is the length the recipe gives; much longer and they tend to snap. Twisting each strip two or three times before baking is a common variation.
- SaltParmesan is already salty and most commercial puff pastry is salted. A pinch is enough. Cayenne or a scrape of mustard powder appears in a number of period cheese-straw recipes and is worth borrowing.
- Yield and servingExpect about 20 to 24 straws from this quantity. They were sent up hot with soup or at the end of dinner with the savoury course; they are best eaten soon after baking, or rewarmed briefly, rather than made far ahead.
Cheese straws belong to the British savoury course, the small hot dish served after the sweet and before dessert in later Victorian and Edwardian dining, and they are the domestic cousin of the French paillettes au fromage found in professional pastry work of the same period. They cost almost nothing, and exist purely to look accomplished on a passed plate. Grated hard cheese sold as Parmesan had been an import staple in English kitchens since the eighteenth century, valued precisely because it kept for months without refrigeration, which is why so many recipes of this vintage reach for it rather than a fresh local cheese.