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Cheese Entree
1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon Five Roses flour 1 cup cream Salt and pepper 3 eggs (beaten separately) 1 cup grated cheese Put the butter into saucepan on the stove and stir in the flour, cream or milk, salt and pepper to taste. Beat the yolks and grated cheese and add to mixture.
When it is cool, add the whites beaten to a stiff froth. Bake about 20 minutes in quite hot oven. Serve hot. May be served in individual dishes.
This is a cheese souffle under another name, and it behaves like one: the whites are the only leavening, so everything hinges on how they are folded and how quickly it reaches the oven.
- Fold, don't stirThe base must be cool before the whites go in, as the recipe says, or they deflate on contact. Fold in a third of the whites to loosen the base, then the rest in two additions, stopping while a few streaks remain.
- "Quite hot oven"Read this as roughly 400F, give or take; period oven descriptions are not precise. A souffle wants strong initial heat to set the outside while steam pushes it up, and 20 minutes at that heat suits a shallow dish or ramekins.
- Five Roses flourThe Lake of the Woods Milling Company's all-purpose household flour. Plain all-purpose flour is the direct substitute; no adjustment needed for one tablespoon.
- A very loose baseOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of cream gives a thin sauce by modern standards. Cook it a minute or two after the flour goes in to lose the raw taste, and expect a batter rather than a paste. Two tablespoons each gives a sturdier souffle if yours collapses.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in a Canadian kitchen of this period would most often have meant a firm Canadian Cheddar. Use a dry, sharp Cheddar; young or pre-shredded cheese carries more moisture and starch and can weep.
- Prepare the dishButter the dish or ramekins well and dust with grated hard cheese or fine crumbs so the mixture can climb. Fill to about three-quarters.
- Yield and timingServes three or four as a light entree, or four to six small ramekins. Serve it the moment it leaves the oven, as the recipe insists; it sinks within a few minutes.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its Five Roses flour, and much of its contents came from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which is why brand-name flour appears in dishes that barely need any. "Entree" here most likely carries its older sense of a made dish served between the heavier courses rather than the North American meaning of a main plate, and a cheese souffle in individual dishes was the kind of light, showy course a household cook was expected to manage without a professional kitchen. Egg-raised cheese puddings of this type are generally traced to French practice, where souffler means simply to blow or puff, and by the early twentieth century they had become standard fare in English-language household manuals.