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Cheese, Toasted, or Welsh Rarebit
Cut some slices of the crumb of bread about half an inch in thickness, and toast them lightly on both sides. Lay on them some slices of good rich cheese, and put them in a cheese-toaster till the cheese is melted. Spread a little made mustard and pepper over them, and serve on very hot plates. It is most desirable to send this dish to table quite hot, as without this it is entirely worthless. (See also WELSH RAREBIT.)
A four-line recipe whose whole success rests on temperature: bread, cheese, mustard, and speed to the table.
- The hingeEverything must be very hot, including the plates. Toasted cheese stiffens quickly as it cools, which is what the original means by "entirely worthless." Warm the plates while the cheese melts.
- Cheese-toasterA Victorian cheese-toaster was a metal dish, sometimes with a hot-water compartment to keep the dish hot at table, set before the fire or on the hob. A hot broiler or a hot oven will stand in for it; take the cheese only as far as melted.
- "Crumb of bread"The soft interior, i.e. slices with the crusts cut away. Half an inch is thicker than sandwich bread; cut from a loaf.
- Toast lightlyDeliberate underdone toasting, since the bread gets a second round of heat under the cheese. Take it barely to pale gold.
- "Good rich cheese"The recipe does not specify; in an English book of this period it would most likely be a farmhouse Cheddar, Cheshire, or Double Gloucester. Aged Cheddar or a Cheddar-Gruyere mix melts well; pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch does not.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard, not mustard powder. English mustard is the plausible period choice; the recipe calls for only a little, spread with pepper after the cheese has melted.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. Two slices and roughly 2 oz of cheese per person is a reasonable allowance for a savoury course or light supper dish.
Cassell's gives this as the plain version and cross-refers to Welsh Rarebit, which in some Victorian books is the wetter, cooked-in-a-pan sort thickened with ale, butter and mustard and poured over toast, though many others treat it as plain toasted cheese, as this very cross-reference suggests. The name is often said to come from an 18th-century English joke at Welsh expense: a "rabbit" that was cheese because that was the meat a poor Welshman could expect, with the folk correction to "rarebit" coming later han than than documented origin. Melted cheese on bread is far older than either name, and it belongs to the English savoury tradition, the small hot dish served after the sweet at dinner or as a supper item. The insistence on the cheese-toaster and very hot plates is a reminder that in a coal-range kitchen the journey from fire to dining room was long enough to ruin a dish.