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Cheese Fritters
Cheese which has become a little dry will answer for this purpose, though, of course, fresh cheese will be better. Put three ounces of cheese in a mortar, with a dessert-spoonful of finely-minced ham, three dessert-spoonfuls of finely-grated bread-crumbs, a tea-spoonful of dry mustard, a piece of butter about the size of a small egg, two or three grains of cayenne, and the yolk of an egg well beaten. Pound these ingredients together until they are perfectly smooth, then form the paste into balls about the size of a walnut, flatten to a thickness of half an inch, dip them in batter, and fry them until lightly browned, then drain. Place them on a napkin, and serve as hot as possible. Time to fry, two or three minutes. Probable cost, 8d. for this quantity. One or two will suffice for each person.
A Victorian savoury made from scraps of hard cheese, close in spirit to a fried croquette. The instructions are complete except for the batter, which the book assumes you already know.
- The hinge: pound it truly smoothThe paste must be homogeneous or the fritters split in the fat and leak cheese. A food processor does in thirty seconds what the mortar does in ten minutes; pulse the cheese, crumbs and ham first, then add the butter and yolk.
- Measures3 oz cheese is about 85 g, roughly a packed cup grated. A dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons, so the crumbs come to about two tablespoons. "Butter about the size of a small egg" is 1½ to 2 oz (40–55 g) — start at the lower end, since too much butter makes a paste that will not hold a shape.
- The cheeseA firm, dry, well-flavoured cheese is what is wanted: aged Cheddar, Cheshire, Gruyère or the dried-out end of a Parmesan. Fresh soft cheeses will slacken the paste. Grate rather than cube it so the pounding goes faster.
- The batter, unspecifiedThe book leaves the batter to the cook. A plain frying batter of flour, a pinch of salt and enough milk or water to make a coating the thickness of double cream, rested half an hour, will serve. A beaten egg white folded in gives a lighter crust.
- FryingThe recipe specifies neither the depth of the fat nor a temperature; if deep frying, 350-375°F suits. The book's two to three minutes is right; longer and the crust darkens past pleasant. Fry only a few at a time so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Chill before you shapeNot in the original, but the buttery paste handles far better after twenty minutes in the refrigerator, and the discs hold their half-inch thickness through the batter and into the fat.
- Yield and servingThis quantity makes roughly eight to ten walnut-sized fritters, so five to ten people at the recipe's one or two each. Drain on paper rather than a napkin and serve immediately, as the recipe insists -- they lose their crispness quickly.
- Mustard and cayenneA full teaspoon of dry mustard in 3 oz of cheese is assertive by modern habit but characteristic of the period's savouries; it is there to cut the fat. Reduce it if you prefer, and treat "two or three grains" of cayenne as a scant pinch.
Cassell's compiled its dictionary for households where cheese was bought in the piece and the last dry inch of it had to earn its keep, and the entry opens with reassurance about stale cheese rather than with a shopping list. Fritters like these belonged to the savoury — the small, sharply seasoned hot dish served after the sweet at a formal English dinner, a course that flourished through the second half of the nineteenth century and had largely disappeared from home cooking by the middle of the twentieth. The mustard-and-cayenne seasoning is the same logic behind Welsh rarebit and the potted cheeses of the period: pungency was thought to make rich cheese digestible late in a long meal. A costing in pence appears with almost every recipe in the book, this one included.