Frances Nelson
WELSH RAREBIT AU
GRATIN
1/2 lb. Swiss Cheese Salt and pepper 6 slices thin toast Mustard sauce Cut cheese into slices one inch thick, lay toast in dripping pan, cover each with slices of cheese and spread with a made mustard and dust lightly with salt and pepper. Set in hot oven until well melted or about ten minutes. The addition of a dropped egg to each slice makes what is called a "Golden Buck."
A baked rarebit rather than a stirred one: no beer, no roux, just cheese, mustard and toast under high heat. Two details in the text need attention before you start.
- The stray heading"NUT CHOPS" plainly belongs to an adjacent entry rather than to this one, whether picked up as a running head or mis-set in the line. It has nothing to do with the rarebit; ignore it.
- One-inch cheeseSlices an inch thick will not melt through in ten minutes — the outside browns while the middle stays firm. Quarter-inch slices, or the same weight coarsely grated, behave the way the recipe expects.
- Dripping panA shallow rectangular pan that sat under a roast to catch fat, i.e. a rimmed baking sheet or a low roasting tin. Nothing is being roasted here; it is simply the flat pan that fits the oven.
- Hot oven425–450F. Ten minutes at that heat melts thin cheese and blisters the top. A broiler set high does the same job in three or four minutes if you watch it.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard from a jar, as distinct from dry mustard powder. Which style is not specified; a spoonful of Dijon reads much the same on toast.
- Swiss cheeseAn Emmental or Gruyère type. It strings rather than flows and can weep fat if overheated, which is another argument for thin slices and a short time in the oven.
- Golden BuckThe "dropped egg" is a poached egg, set on top after the cheese comes out of the oven. Cook the eggs alongside and assemble at the table; they will not poach in the pan.
- YieldSix slices, so three modest servings as a supper dish or six as a savoury course at the end of a meal.
Welsh rarebit — recorded as "Welsh rabbit" from the early eighteenth century, the "rarebit" spelling being a later genteel correction — is often said to have been a joke at the expense of people too poor for meat, cheese on toast standing in for game, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented. By 1900 it was a familiar late-night dish of theatre and club suppers on both sides of the Atlantic: it could be made on a chafing dish after the curtain came down, needed no butcher, and fed whoever was still awake. The variants had names to match that supper-room world — a Golden Buck with an egg, a Yorkshire Buck with bacon added, a Blushing Bunny made with tomato. This version skips the beer and the stirred sauce of the classic recipe and simply bakes the cheese on the toast, which is the shortcut a hungry cook with an oven would reach for.