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Welsh Rarebit without Ale
1/4 pound grated cheese, 1 ounce butter, 1/2 cupful of milk, and yolks of 2 raw eggs beaten together, 1 saltspoonful of salt, 1 saltspoonful of dry mustard, 1 saltspoonful of pepper, and a little cayenne. Mix these ingredients together in a saucepan and stir over the fire until melted perfectly smooth. Have prepared 3 slices of toast on a hot dish and pour the dressing over and serve.
Golden Buck.-A golden buck is a Welsh rarebit with a poached egg laid on it. Yorkshire Rarebit.-A Yorkshire rarebit is a golden buck with a slice of broiled bacon laid on it. All rarebits may be prepared at the table in a chafing-dish, if the grated cheese and toast are prepared in the kitchen.
A custard-thickened rarebit rather than a beer-thinned one, so the whole thing hinges on gentle heat. Treat it as a stovetop custard that happens to contain cheese.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So a quarter teaspoon each of salt, dry mustard and pepper, plus a pinch of cayenne.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of grated cheese is about 4 oz, or roughly 1 cup loosely packed. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons; half a cupful of milk is 4 fl oz.
- Keep it below a simmerTwo raw yolks in half a cup of milk will scramble the moment the pan boils. Use low heat or a bowl over barely simmering water, stir constantly, and pull it off when it coats the spoon smoothly.
- Cheese choiceAn aged Cheddar, Cheshire or Lancashire melts into this best. Pre-shredded supermarket cheese is dusted with starch or cellulose and will give a slightly grainy sauce; grate your own, and grate it fine so it melts before the eggs set.
- If it breaksOverheated rarebit separates into oily cheese and watery curds. A splash of cold milk off the heat with hard whisking will sometimes bring it back; past that, start again.
- YieldThree slices of toast, which serves two as a light supper or three at tea. The mixture thickens fast as it cools, so have the toast hot and on the plates before you pour.
- The chafing dish noteThe closing line is practical advice for tableside cooking: grate the cheese and make the toast in the kitchen, then build the sauce in front of guests over a spirit lamp, which supplies exactly the low heat the eggs want.
- Bacon for the Yorkshire version"Broiled" here means cooked over or under direct heat; a pan will do in practice. Dry-cured streaky bacon holds up better than modern water-added bacon, which steams rather than browns.
Welsh rarebit is documented from the early eighteenth century as "Welsh rabbit," generally understood as an English joke at Welsh expense; the usual explanation is that the cheese on toast stood in for meat a poor household could not put on the table, though that reading is traditional rather than documented. "Rarebit" appears later as a genteel respelling of a name that was never about rabbit. Many Victorian and Edwardian versions thin the cheese with ale or beer, so a version built on milk and egg yolks instead was worth a separate entry in a book like this one, whether for temperance households or simply for a smoother, richer sauce. The two variations appended here are associated with the American chafing-dish vogue of the turn of the century, when cooking at the table was fashionable entertainment: a poached egg on top made a golden buck, and a rasher of bacon over that a Yorkshire rarebit.