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Welsh Rarebit (Half pound of cheese one)
Half pound of cheese, one tablespoon made mustard, little cayenne pepper, one tablespoon of very fine bread crumbs soaked in milk. Rub bottom of heated pan with butter; put in cheese, stirring fast; when melted, put in butter, next mustard, pepper, lastly crumbs pressed dry. Spread, smoking hot, on toast.
Serve at once.
A short, butter-and-cheese version of rarebit with no ale and no flour — the crumbs are the only thickener, so technique matters more than the ingredient list suggests.
- The hinge: low heat, constant motionCheese melted straight in a pan will break and turn to rubber in a stringy pool of oil if it gets too hot. Keep the pan over the lowest workable heat, stir without stopping, and pull it off the moment it is smooth.
- Which cheeseThe recipe does not say; a well-aged Cheddar or Lancashire suits it. Half a pound is about 225 g, roughly two cups grated; grate it rather than cubing it so it melts before the pan overheats.
- "Made mustard"This means prepared mustard from the jar, not dry powder. An English mustard is closest in strength; a tablespoon is assertive, which is the point.
- The crumbsSoak fine dry crumbs in a little milk, then squeeze them genuinely dry — "pressed dry" — before they go in. Wet crumbs will loosen the cheese into a sauce rather than binding it.
- Butter quantityThe recipe never says how much. A tablespoon for the pan and another tablespoon stirred in after the cheese melts is in keeping with the proportions.
- Toast firstHave the toast made, hot, and on warmed plates before the cheese goes in the pan. The mixture stiffens as it cools and cannot be reheated without splitting.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; half a pound of cheese will cover about four slices of toast as a savoury course, or two as a supper dish.
Welsh rarebit is melted seasoned cheese on toast, and the name is the older joke rather than a corruption of anything: eighteenth-century English usage recorded it as "Welsh rabbit," a mocking term for a dish of cheese standing in for meat, with "rarebit" appearing later as a genteel respelling. Many Victorian and Edwardian versions work the cheese with ale or beer and a little flour or egg; this one is drier and more direct, thickened only with soaked breadcrumbs. A hot savoury of this kind was served at the end of dinner or at a late supper, a fashion associated with British households around the turn of the twentieth century.