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Cheese, Toasted
Slice some good, rich cheese. Put it in a cheese-toaster on a hot plate, and when it is melted, stir into it some made mustard and pepper. A little port or beer is sometimes added, and if the cheese is at all dry a little butter should be also used. Toast should be served with it. This dish is worth nothing at all unless it can be served quite hot. Toasted cheese is sometimes sent to table in little tins with boiling water underneath, and this is an excellent way to keep the toast hot. A few minutes will be sufficient to melt the cheese.
This is Welsh rarebit in its simplest form: cheese melted, seasoned, and eaten scalding hot on toast. The whole dish turns on temperature and on not letting the cheese overheat.
- The hinge: gentle heat, briefCheese that goes past a bare melt separates into oil and rubbery curd. Melt it over low heat, or in a bowl set over hot water, and stop the moment it flows. The instruction "a few minutes will be sufficient" is meant literally.
- The cheese-toasterA Victorian cheese-toaster was a shallow metal dish; some had a hot-water reservoir beneath and some a hinged lid to reflect heat, though here it simply stands on a hot plate. A small heavy saucepan or a bowl over simmering water does the same job; a fondue pot is the closest modern equivalent.
- "Good, rich cheese"A firm, well-flavoured farmhouse Cheddar, Cheshire, Lancashire or Double Gloucester. Young, high-moisture cheese melts smoothly but tastes of nothing; very aged cheese tastes of everything but breaks readily. A mature but not crumbly Cheddar is the usual compromise.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard is mustard already mixed into a paste with water or vinegar, as opposed to dry mustard flour. English mustard is the intended flavour; start with about a teaspoon per 8 oz of cheese.
- Port or beerA tablespoon or two per 8 oz of cheese, no more. The liquid loosens the melt and its acidity helps the emulsion hold; brown ale or stout is the usual choice.
- Butter for dry cheeseExtra fat gives the mixture something to emulsify into and hides a certain dryness. A knob of butter, or a spoonful of cream, added off the heat will bring a grainy melt back together.
- Keeping it hot at tableThe "little tins with boiling water underneath" are simply a bain-marie. A warmed dish over a tealight, or heated plates, will do. Cheese that has cooled and set can be gently rewarmed once, but it will never be as smooth.
- YieldReckon roughly 2 oz of cheese and one thick slice of toast per person as a savoury course, double that as a supper dish for two.
Melted cheese on toast was a staple of the English supper table and the tavern long before Cassell's, and it sat at the awkward junction of the cheap and the fashionable: bread and cheese for a labourer, but also the "savoury" served at a formal dinner, when a small, sharp, hot mouthful was thought to settle the palate. The existence of a purpose-made cheese-toaster with a hot-water well shows how seriously the problem of temperature was taken; the entry's blunt verdict that the dish "is worth nothing at all unless it can be served quite hot" is the whole of the tradition in one sentence. The name Welsh rabbit, or rarebit, is generally traced to eighteenth-century English joking at Welsh poverty, the cheese standing in for meat, and it is not used here at all -- Cassell's simply calls the thing what it is.