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Welsh Rarebit
Cut half a pound of mellow Gloucester cheese into thin slices. Put an ounce and a half of butter upon a plate, and knead it before the fire with a tea-spoonful of unmixed mustard and a pinch of cayenne till it looks like thick cream. Cut from a large loaf a round of bread half an inch thick. Trim away the crust, toast the bread, and butter thickly. Lay half the cheese upon it, pour half the seasoned butter upon that, and add, first the remainder of the cheese, then the rest of the butter. Put the bread in a Dutch oven before a clear fire, and let it remain until the cheese is melted. Serve very hot. Time to toast the cheese, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A single large toast built in four layers rather than a poured sauce, and the technique depends on radiant heat from the side rather than from above. Two things need translating: the vessel and the twenty minutes.
- The Dutch ovenHere this means a tin reflector oven — an open-fronted metal box stood beside the fire to bounce heat onto whatever is inside it. A modern grill or broiler element does the same work, with the rack set so the surface sits about 4 inches below the heat.
- Twenty minutes is the old vessel, not the dishThat timing belongs to a reflector oven catching indirect heat from a fire. Under a broiler the cheese melts and blisters in 3 to 5 minutes; held longer it separates and turns to oil and rubber. Take it out when it is glossy and just bubbling at the edges.
- Mellow GloucesterA ripe Gloucester, Single or Double; Double Gloucester is the richer of the two and the easier to find, widely sold in Britain. A mild to medium farmhouse cheddar behaves much the same. Avoid anything very sharp or very dry, which will break rather than flow.
- Unmixed mustardDry mustard powder straight from the tin, not prepared mustard from a jar. English mustard powder is what is meant. A level teaspoon in 1½ oz butter reads as assertive but not harsh once the cheese is on it.
- Kneading before the fireThis is only softening the butter to a spreadable paste so it will blend with the powder without melting to liquid. Room-temperature butter worked with a fork on a plate does it; if it turns oily the mustard will sit in streaks.
- Weights and moneyHalf a pound of cheese is 225 g, an ounce and a half of butter about 40 g. The sixpence given as probable cost is a Victorian retail figure and useful only as a period detail.
- Build orderCheese, seasoned butter, cheese, butter again. The final layer of butter finishes the surface, so do not fold it all into the cheese.
- YieldOne thick round from a large loaf, stated as enough for two or three. Cut into wedges at the table and serve on hot plates — it stiffens fast as it cools.
The name is one of the long-running puzzles of English food writing: Welsh rabbit appears in print in the early eighteenth century, with rarebit emerging later as an apparent attempt to make sense of it, and the usual explanation — that it was a joke about Welsh households eating melted cheese where others ate game — is traditional rather than documented. Toasted cheese was a standard supper and savoury course dish, the kind of thing served after the sweet in a Victorian dinner or on its own late at night. The instruction to work before a clear fire in a Dutch oven suggests a coal range with an open grate, the reflector oven standing on the hearth, which is why the timing looks so long to anyone cooking under a gas or electric grill.