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CHEESE, STEWED (another way)
Proceed exactly as above, but instead of covering the sliced cheese in the saucepan with new milk, cover it with ale, porter, or port, and flavour it with mixed mustard and cayenne. Serve as hot as possible. Time to stew the cheese, ten or fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the ale or wine. Sufficient for four persons.
A variation on the preceding stewed cheese, swapping milk for ale, porter or port. It is essentially the ancestor of Welsh rarebit, and the whole thing hinges on gentle heat.
- Keep the heat very lowCheese held over direct heat for ten or fifteen minutes will split into a rubbery curd and a slick of oil. Melt it slowly in a heavy pan over the lowest flame, or in a bowl over barely simmering water, and stop as soon as it is smooth — five minutes is usually plenty.
- What "as above" meansThe preceding recipe has the cheese cut in slices and laid in a saucepan with enough new milk to cover it. For four people, something in the region of 8 oz of cheese, with just enough liquid to come level with the slices, is a reasonable working assumption.
- Which cheeseA firm English cheese such as Cheddar, Cheshire or Gloucester is the likeliest intention. A well-aged Cheddar melts best here; young supermarket cheese and anything pre-grated with anti-caking starch will go grainy.
- Mixed mustardThis is prepared mustard — English mustard powder slaked with water, not a French or wholegrain jar. A teaspoon for four is about right, with cayenne on the tip of a knife.
- Ale, porter or portUse a mild brown ale or a stout rather than a heavily hopped modern IPA, which will turn bitter as it reduces. Port gives a sweeter, darker result and suits a stronger blue-veined or well-matured cheese.
- If it separatesA teaspoon of cornflour tossed through the cheese before it goes in the pan, or a spoonful of cream stirred in at the end, will hold the emulsion together.
- Cost and yield"Probable cost, 4d." is the pre-decimal price of the ingredients other than the ale or wine, the costings being a standard feature of Cassell's entries. It serves four as a savoury or supper dish, and must go to the table immediately — it stiffens as it cools.
Melted cheese thinned with ale and spread on toast is the oldest form of what English cookbooks called Welsh rabbit, a name recorded from the early eighteenth century and generally taken as a joke at the expense of a region too poor for game — "rarebit" is a later genteel respelling. Cassell's places this among its stewed cheese entries rather than under rarebit, reflecting the Victorian habit of treating hot cheese as a savoury: a small, sharply seasoned dish served at the end of dinner after the sweet, or as a late supper. The costings in pence that follow each recipe were one of the dictionary's selling points to the mistress of a middling household, who was expected to check the cook's spending; the fourpence, as the recipe notes, excludes the ale or wine.