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Hot Cheese Sandwiches
Melt 1/4 pound cheese with 3 tablespoons Crisco, 1/2 teaspoon salt, few grains red pepper, and 1 teaspoon mustard; moisten with a little vinegar and spread between thin slices of white bread. Cut into neat rounds.
A potted-cheese spread of the Welsh rarebit family, softened with fat and sharpened with mustard and vinegar. The whole thing hangs on gentle heat: cheese taken above a bare simmer will split into stringy curds and a slick of oil.
- Melt low and slowUse a double boiler or the lowest possible burner and pull the pan off the heat while a few lumps remain. Grate the cheese first so it goes fluid before it has time to overheat.
- CriscoThis book was written to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated shortening. Butter gives a better flavour here, and 3 tablespoons of it does the same job of keeping the melted cheese soft and spreadable.
- What cheeseA quarter pound is about 4 oz, roughly 1 cup grated. The period default was a firm factory Cheddar; a sharp aged Cheddar or a Cheshire works. Avoid pre-shredded cheese, which is dusted with anti-caking starch.
- Mustard and pepperThe teaspoon of mustard is most likely dry mustard powder rather than the prepared jarred kind. "Few grains red pepper" means a pinch of cayenne, well under 1/8 teaspoon.
- The vinegarAdd it a few drops at a time off the heat and stir hard. The acid helps the mixture stay smooth rather than grainy; a tablespoon at most, or the spread turns thin and sour.
- Spread warmThe mixture stiffens as it cools, so fill the sandwiches while it is still soft. If it sets before you get there, warm it briefly again over water.
- "Hot" sandwichesNothing here tells you to toast them; the title may refer simply to the warm filling, or to the mustard and cayenne. If you want them browned, a hot pan with a little butter for a minute a side will do it.
- YieldEnough filling for about 6 to 8 thin-bread sandwiches, which after being cut into rounds makes a plate of a dozen or so small ones. Save the trimmings for crumbs.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s: the cookbook published by a food manufacturer, in this case Procter & Gamble, to teach cooks what to do with an unfamiliar product. Crisco appeared in 1911 as a vegetable shortening meant to replace lard and butter, and books like this one worked it into every course, including places where no cook would previously have thought to put fat at all. That is why a simple melted-cheese spread, essentially a cold-serving cousin of Welsh rarebit, arrives with three tablespoons of shortening in it. And the instruction to cut the sandwiches into neat rounds points at the afternoon tea table, where trimmed crustless shapes were the mark of a properly turned-out plate.