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Cheese Balls (Tablespoons butter cup flour)
4 tablespoons butter. 3/4 cup flour. 1/2 cup water. 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Few grains cayenne. 3 eggs. 1/4 cup grated Edam Cheese.
Cottolene.
PROCESS: Melt butter in a sauce-pan, add water, cook one minute; add flour mixed with seasonings. Cook until mixture leaves the sides of pan, stirring constantly. Cool slightly, add unbeaten eggs one at a time, add cheese. Mix well and drop from tip of teaspoon into deep hot Cottolene. Drain and serve immediately.
This is choux paste, fried rather than baked, and finished with grated cheese — what French kitchens call aigrettes au fromage. The whole thing hinges on drying the paste properly before the eggs go in.
- CottoleneA brand of cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, and the reason this book exists. Any neutral frying fat with a high smoke point stands in for it — peanut, canola or vegetable shortening.
- Fat temperature"Deep hot" is judged by eye in the original; in modern terms it corresponds to roughly 360-375F. Below that the balls soak fat and stay heavy; above it they colour before the centres set and collapse on the drainer.
- The order of operationsThe text says melt butter, add water, cook one minute, then add flour mixed with the seasonings. Standard choux practice is to have the liquid boiling before the flour goes in; flour stirred into water that is merely hot tends to give a slack paste that will not puff.
- Drying the paste"Cook until mixture leaves the sides of pan" is the real instruction — keep stirring over the heat two to three minutes until a film forms on the pan bottom. This drives off water and lets the paste absorb all three eggs.
- Adding the eggsCool the paste until it is warm rather than hot, or the eggs scramble. Beat each one in until the mass comes back together before the next; the finished paste should fall from a spoon in a thick ribbon.
- EdamA firm, mild Dutch cheese, still sold in its red wax. A quarter cup grated is a modest amount by modern taste; Gouda or a young Cheddar behaves the same way.
- Frying the ballsThey swell to two or three times their raw size and tend to turn themselves over as they cook. Fry a few at a time so the fat holds its temperature, until deep gold and crisp through.
- Yield and servingPerhaps two to three dozen small balls, depending on the size of the spoonful — a savoury course or soup garnish for a small table. They deflate within minutes, so the instruction to serve immediately is not politeness.
52 Sunday Dinners was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and issued as an advertising cookbook for Cottolene, the cottonseed-oil shortening marketed by the N. K. Fairbank Company of Chicago, which is why the brand name appears in the ingredient list in place of a plain "fat for frying." Cottonseed oil was an industrial byproduct that American manufacturers worked through the later nineteenth century to establish as a cheaper, more consistent substitute for lard, and sponsored recipe books were a standard tool of that campaign. The dish itself is much older than the shortening: fried choux paste with cheese appears in French cookery as aigrettes, and its presence in a Sunday dinner menu reflects the era's habit of opening a long dinner with a small hot savoury. Edam was a sensible choice for the American kitchen of the period — waxed, shelf-stable and widely imported.