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Cheese, Stewed
This is a good way to use cheese which has become too dry to serve in the ordinary manner. Of course, fresh cheese is to be preferred. Put two ounces of good double Glo'ster or Cheshire cheese, chopped small, into a saucepan, with half an ounce of butter, or more if the cheese is very dry. Add sufficient cream or new milk to cover it, and let it simmer gently, stirring it every now and then, until the cheese is dissolved. Take it from the fire for a minute or two, and mix in very gradually a well-beaten egg. Serve it on a hot dish, and stick little three-cornered sippets of toasted bread in it. Serve as hot as possible. Time to stew, ten or fifteen minutes. Probable cost, if made with milk, 6d. Sufficient for four persons.
A late-Victorian way of rescuing hardened cheese, and a close cousin of Welsh rarebit. The whole thing hangs on gentle heat: cheese boiled in milk turns to rubber and weeps fat.
- Keep it below a simmerDespite the instruction to "simmer gently," hold the pan at a bare tremble over the lowest heat, or use a bowl over hot water. Cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat above about 160F, which is what turns a smooth stew stringy and greasy.
- The eggOff the heat, whisk a little of the hot cheese into the beaten egg first, then return the lot to the pan. The recipe's own "take it from the fire" and "very gradually" are aimed at the same problem: egg tipped into the hot mixture at once risks scrambling. Do not let it boil.
- Ten to fifteen minutes is for dry cheeseTen to fifteen minutes -- The stated time suits the hard, dried-out cheese the recipe is designed to rescue; the book itself notes fresh cheese is preferable. Grated rather than chopped cheese will melt appreciably faster.
- The cheesesDouble Gloucester and Cheshire are both still made and both melt well. Any firm, well-aged cow's-milk cheese works; grate it rather than chopping so it dissolves evenly.
- New milk"New milk" is fresh whole milk straight from the cow, unskimmed and with the cream still in it. Use whole milk, or single cream if the cheese is very dry.
- SippetsSmall triangles of toasted bread, stood upright in the dish, probably used to scoop up the cheese as much as to garnish it.
- Scale and servingTwo ounces of cheese "sufficient for four persons" means very small portions, which points to a savoury-course dish rather than a supper dish. For a modern lunch reckon on 2 to 3 oz of cheese per person and increase the butter and milk in proportion.
- CostSixpence for four puts this among the economy entries; the first line says as much, offering the dish as a use for cheese too dry to serve in the ordinary way.
The recipe's logic is stated in its first line: dry, cracked cheese that could no longer be brought to table on a board could still be melted down. Melted-cheese dishes have a long run in British cookery, from the various eighteenth-century "toasted cheese" preparations onward, and the family includes Welsh rarebit, Scotch rarebit and ramekin-baked versions. The addition of a beaten egg puts this one nearer a fondue in the older French sense, where egg is used to bind and lighten the melted cheese, rather than a wine-based Swiss fondue. Double Gloucester and Cheshire were both widely available English hard cheeses that melt cleanly. The savoury course, a small hot salty dish served at the end of dinner, was a characteristically British habit of the period and gave dishes like this one a place at even a formal table.