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Ring Tum Diddy
One-half onion cut up fine, butter size of an egg, dash of paprika, a little salt, one can of Campbell's tomato soup, one and onehalf cups of grated cheese. Serve on toast.
The receipt is a list of ingredients with almost no method, which was normal for a village cookbook where everyone already knew the dish. The order that works is onion softened in the butter, soup warmed, cheese stirred in off the boil.
- Butter size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Old cookbooks measured butter against eggs and walnuts because it was cut from a crock rather than a stamped quarter-pound stick.
- The can of soupCondensed tomato soup, used undiluted — a modern 10.75-oz can is close to the size intended. Adding the water called for on the label will give you thin soup with cheese in it rather than a rarebit.
- CheeseOne and a half cups grated is roughly 6 ounces. A sharp cheddar or a mix of cheddar and American gives the flavor and the smooth melt; aged hard cheeses break more readily.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerOnce the cheese goes in, hold the pan at a bare steam and stir until it is just melted. Boiling makes the cheese seize into strings with a slick of orange fat on top, and no amount of stirring brings it back.
- OnionHalf an onion, minced fine, wants three or four minutes in the butter over moderate heat before the soup goes in. Raw onion dropped into the finished sauce stays crunchy and harsh.
- SeasoningThe paprika of the period would most often have been the sweet sort, used for color and mild warmth. Dry mustard or Worcestershire appears in many related rarebit receipts if the mixture tastes flat.
- Yield and servingServes four over two slices of toast each, or three generously. Spoon it out the moment it is smooth; it thickens and skins over quickly, and reheating tends to break the sauce.
Ring Tum Diddy — also written Ring Tum Ditty, Ring Tum Diddie and a dozen other ways — is an American cousin of Welsh rarebit, in which tomato replaces the ale or milk of the British version. The name appears to be nonsense, though its origin is not documented; "rarebit" itself is a later alteration of "Welsh rabbit." The dish spread through community and church cookbooks in the early twentieth century. The naming of a specific brand of canned soup places the receipt after the late 1890s, when Campbell's condensed tomato soup came on the market and made a smooth, sweet, thickened tomato base available to any cook with a can opener. It belongs to the category of cheese-and-toast suppers — chafing-dish food, Sunday-night food, made from what was already in the house.