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Cheese Balls
1/2 cup breadcrumbs, 1 teaspoon Crisco, 1/4 teaspoon mustard, 1 cup grated cheese, 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a few grains red pepper. Rub Crisco into crumbs and cheese, add seasonings and egg well beaten. Shape in small balls and fry in hot Crisco. Drain and serve hot.
A quick fritter of cheese, crumbs and egg, built to use the shortening the book was written to sell. It comes together in minutes, but the mixture is loose and the balls will break apart if the fat is not hot enough.
- Fat temperature is the hinge"hot Crisco" is unspecified, but for frying of this kind a fat temperature in the region of 365-375F is the usual modern target. Too cool and the egg-bound crumb absorbs grease and the balls slump; too hot and the outside colours before the cheese inside has melted. A thermometer is worth using since the recipe gives no visual cue.
- Red pepper"A few grains red pepper" means cayenne, not paprika or crushed chilli flakes. A pinch, perhaps 1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon, is the likely intent.
- MustardDry English or Colman's-style mustard powder, measured as a dry ingredient. Prepared jarred mustard adds liquid the mixture cannot absorb.
- Grated cheeseIn a 1910s American kitchen this means a firm, dry, well-aged cheddar or the store cheese sold by the wedge. Pre-shredded supermarket cheese is coated in anti-caking starch and holds together poorly; grate your own from a block.
- CrumbsDry, fine crumbs, not soft fresh bread. Fresh crumbs carry too much moisture and the balls will not hold shape in the fat.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated in the 2000s to reduce trans fat. Any neutral frying fat or oil with a high smoke point will serve, with some difference in flavour and texture.
- Chill before fryingThe recipe skips this, but twenty minutes in the refrigerator firms the mixture and cuts down on balls bursting in the fat. Shape them no larger than a walnut.
- Yield and servingAbout 14 to 18 small balls, enough for four as a savoury or first course. They are worth eating within a few minutes of draining; reheated, the cheese turns oily.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble as a promotional cookbook after Crisco was introduced in 1911, which is why a teaspoon of shortening appears in a recipe that hardly needs one and why the frying medium is named rather than described. Fried cheese balls of this type belong to the Anglo-American tradition of the savoury, a small hot cheese course served near the end of a meal. The technique is older than the branded fat: bind grated cheese with egg and crumb, season sharply with mustard and cayenne to cut the richness, and fry small. Cookbooks of the period ran variants under names like cheese fritters, cheese straws and ramequins, all trading on the same idea that a little strong cheese stretched with crumb could carry a course.