Home › Cooking of True Proteids, Tissue Builders, Milk and Cheese › Cooking of True Proteids, Tissue Builders, Milk and Cheese: Serve
Cooking of True Proteids, Tissue Builders, Milk and Cheese: Serve
CHEESE STICKS Cut rye, whole wheat or graham bread into slices half an inch thick. Cut these into strips half an inch wide, after removing the crust. Grate two ounces of cheese; add a dash of paprika and beat into one-fourth a cup (two ounces) of butter, beaten to a cream. Spread this mixture on one side of the strips of bread and set them into the oven to melt the cheese. Serve with a fresh, green salad. Crackers may be used in place of the strips of bread. CHEESE OMELET (BAKED) 2 eggs 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 6 tablespoonfuls 1/4 teaspoonful of paprika of grated cheese 1 cup of milk Beat the yolks of the eggs until light and thick; fold in the cheese, salt and pepper; add the milk, folding it in, then fold in the whites of the eggs, beaten dry. Bake in a buttered dish or in cups. Serve in the cups with toast or wafers, a green salad or canned fruit.
CHEESE TIMBALES 1 tablespoonful of butter 3/4 cup of liquid (cream, milk 1 tablespoonful of flour or white broth) 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 pound of cheese (grated) 1/4 teaspoonful of paprika 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk Melt the butter; in it cook the flour and seasonings, then add the liquid and stir until the sauce boils. Add the cheese and the eggs, beaten slightly. Turn into buttered timbale moulds, or, one mould of larger size. Set the mould or moulds into a pan on several folds of paper, surround with boiling water, and let cook in the oven until firm in the center. The water around the moulds should not boil during the cooking. Remove from the dish; let stand two or three minutes, then loosen the mixture at the edge of the moulds and invert them on a serving dish. Serve with a cup of sauce. Use milk, broth or tomato puree, as the liquid for the sauce.
SPAGHETTI CREOLE 1/2 cup of spaghetti or maca- 1/2 pound of round steak roni 3 tablespoonfuls of butter 2 tomatoes 1/4 cup of grated cheese 1 slice of onion 1/2 teaspoonful of salt Break the spaghetti or macaroni into small pieces; cook these in boiling salted water until tender (See page 167), then drain and rinse in cold water. Peel the tomatoes and with a spoon empty them of seeds. Put the tomato pulp over the fire with the slice of onion, chopped very fine or grated, and let simmer, covered closely, until the macaroni is tender. Chop the meat fine; put it over the fire in a hot frying pan and stir while it turns from red to a brown color, then at once add it to the tomato and onion; add also the prepared macaroni, the butter, cheese and salt. Mix the ingredients by lifting them with a spoon and fork (or two forks), letting them stand meanwhile over hot water. Serve very hot. Cooked tomatoes pressed through a sieve, to exclude seeds, and dried or smoked beef (from one-fourth to a scant half pound) may be used in place of the fresh tomatoes and round steak. CHEESE TOAST, WITH BACON This dish may be made of any variety of bread, but it is particularly good when made of Boston brown bread. While the bread is being toasted, melt three level tablespoonfuls of butter; cook in it one level tablespoonful and a half of flour and one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and paprika; when frothy stir in three-fourths a cup of rich milk; stir until boiling, then set over hot water and stir in half or three-fourths a cup of grated cheese; continue stirring until the cheese is melted, then pour over the toast. A slice of crisp bacon is a good addition to each slice of toast. For bacon rolls, roll the bacon, pass a wooden toothpick through it, then fry in deep fat. HOT CHEESE SANDWICHES 6 slices of bread 1/3 an inch 1 egg thick 1/2 cup of milk Butter Salt Grated cheese Remove the crust from the bread while trimming the slices, piled together, to a uniform size. Cut the slices in halves. Spread the bread with butter; grate cheese over the butter, using as much as can be pressed into the butter; press two pieces of the bread together, to form a sandwich, and continue until the six sand-wiches are ready. Beat the egg, add the milk and salt, and mix all together, in this dip the sandwiches, first on one side and then on the other. Melt a little butter in a hot frying pan and in it set the sandwiches; when the bread is browned on one side, turn the sand-wiches to brown the other side. Serve at once.
CHEESE RAMEQUINS 3 tablespoonfuls of melted 3/4 cup of fine, soft bread butter crumbs 1/2 teaspoonful (scant) of salt 1/4 pound of grated cheese 1/2 teaspoonful (scant) of pap- 2 eggs, well beaten rika 1 1/2 cups of milk Melt the butter, add the seasonings, crumbs and cheese and mix thoroughly. Add the milk to the eggs and stir into the first mixture. Turn the mixture into buttered ramequins and let bake, surrounded by hot water, in a moderate oven. Serve very hot.
CEREAL WITH CHEESE 1 pint of boiling water 1/3 cup of Cream of Wheat or 1/2 teaspoonful of salt similar cereal 1/4 pound of grated cheese 2 tablespoonfuls of butter Put the upper part of a double boiler, holding the water and salt, over the fire, and when the water is again boiling, stir while sprinkling in the cereal; let cook vigorously five minutes, then set into boiling water, cover and let cook about forty minutes; then add the butter and the greater part of the cheese, beating them in thoroughly. Turn the mixture into a pan, rinsed with cold water, to make a thin sheet. When cold turn from the pan and cut into squares. Butter a serving dish that may be set into the oven. Put squares in the dish, leaving a little space between them, to cover the bottom of the dish; sprinkle these with cheese, then set other squares above and sprinkle with cheese. Set the dish into the oven to make all very hot. MACARONI BAKED WITH MILK AND CHEESE 1/2 cup of macaroni Salt and pepper 1/8 to 1/4 cup of grated cheese Milk or thin cream 1/4 cup or less of butter Cook the macaroni, broken in pieces, in boiling, salted water until tender; drain, rinse in cold water and drain again. Butter a baking dish (suitable for the table); put in a layer of macaroni, sprinkle lightly with salt, pepper, and grated cheese (Swiss, Parmesan or common factory) and dot it with bits of butter, then put in another layer of macaroni and add the other ingredients as before. Pour in rich milk, thin cream or skimmed milk mixed with a beaten egg, until it nearly covers the macaroni. Bake until the cheese is melted or the egg is set.
A cluster of small cheese dishes from a chapter organised around protein rather than around courses. Nothing here is difficult, but the oven temperatures are missing throughout and several of the ingredient names have shifted.
- Serves twoThe book is scaled for a household of two, which is why the quantities look thin: half a cup of macaroni, two eggs, a quarter pound of cheese. Doubling for four works, though the baked omelet, timbales and ramequins will need longer in the water bath.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures, and only the ramequins are assigned "a moderate oven," usually read as somewhere in the 350-375F range. The cheese sticks and the reheated cereal squares need only enough heat to melt cheese; for the baked omelet, timbales and ramequins, 325-350F in the water bath is a safe reading.
- The water bath is the hingeFor the timbales the instruction that matters is the author's own: the water around the moulds should not boil during the cooking. (The ramequins recipe says only "surrounded by hot water," but the same applies.) Once it boils the custard curdles and weeps. Keep it at a bare tremble, and pull the moulds when the centre is just set -- roughly half an hour for small moulds, longer for one large one.
- "Common factory" cheeseFactory cheese meant plain American cheddar of no particular pedigree. Use a mild to medium cheddar; the Swiss and Parmesan named alongside it still mean what they say. Grate from a block rather than using pre-shredded, which is coated with starch and melts grainily.
- White brothA pale unbrowned stock, usually veal or chicken, made without roasted bones so it would not tint the sauce. Light chicken stock is the closest substitute.
- Round steak, chopped fineThis is ground beef by hand. Buy ground round and cook it through — the original stirs it only until it "turns from red to a brown color," which is not a doneness test. Ground beef needs 160F.
- Rinsing the pastaDraining and rinsing macaroni in cold water was standard when pasta was cooked well past tender and needed the surface starch washed off. For the baked dish it does no harm; for Spaghetti Creole, which is dressed and served at once, you will get a better-coated result if you cook the pasta just to al dente and skip the rinse.
- Cream of Wheat timingForty minutes in a double boiler suits the coarse farina of the day. Modern farina cooks far faster in a saucepan, a few minutes for the standard grind and less for instant. Whichever you use, the point is a very stiff porridge that will set into a sheet firm enough to cut, so keep the ratio near the pint of water to a third cup given here.
- Bacon rolls in deep fatRolled bacon on a toothpick, fried in deep fat, spits hard because of the water in the rashers. Pat the bacon dry, keep the fat around 350F, and use a wooden pick rather than plastic.
- Paprika, not cayenneA quarter teaspoon of paprika is doing colour and mild warmth, not heat. Use sweet Hungarian paprika; smoked paprika will dominate these delicate cheese custards.
These pages come from Janet McKenzie Hill's Cooking for Two, a trade volume aimed at the small household by the editor of the Boston Cooking-School Magazine, and the chapter heading tells you as much about 1900s American food thinking as the recipes do. "True proteids" and "tissue builders" belong to the vocabulary of the new domestic science, which organised meals by nutritional function — protein, carbohydrate, fat — rather than by course, and taught cooks to regard cheese and milk as a legitimate substitute for a meat dish rather than a garnish. Hence a chapter in which cheese carries the protein load of an entire supper: baked in custards, folded into a soufflé-style omelet, layered with cooked farina, spread on rye or Boston brown bread. The spelling ramequin (now usually ramekin) arguably still meant the cheese preparation itself as much as the dish it baked in, and "Creole" here signals the tomato-onion base that American cookbooks of the period attached to almost anything from New Orleans. The frequent note that skimmed milk with a beaten egg will do as well as cream is the book's other quiet theme: this is thrifty cooking, written for two people and a small stove.