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Welsh Rarebit
1 lb. New York cream cheese 1 heaping dessert-spoon corn-starch 1 egg 1/2 cup cream Dissolve corn-starch in cream. Beat egg and add to mixture. Cut up cheese and pour in mixture. Put in double boiler and stir until melted and about to thicken. Add glass of beer or ale, continue to stir seasoning with salt to taste and adding paprika liberally. Stir until right consistency for serving. Serve on dark caraway rye bread or toast, as preferred.
A cheese sauce that lives or dies on two things: which cheese you buy, and how gently you heat it. The wording of the first ingredient is the trap.
- "New York cream cheese" is cheddarIn American cookbooks of this period "cream cheese" usually meant a full-cream, whole-milk cheese rather than Philadelphia-style fresh cheese, and "New York" points to a New York State cheese of the cheddar type; the instruction to "cut up" the cheese fits a firm cheese rather than a soft spread. A pound of good cheddar is the safest substitution, grated rather than cut so it melts evenly.
- Keep it below a simmerThe hinge of the dish. The double boiler is not optional caution but the whole method: cheddar breaks and turns stringy with a slick of oil above about 175F. Keep the water beneath at a bare simmer, never boiling, and stir continuously.
- Dessert-spoonBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon — roughly 2 teaspoons, and "heaping" here means closer to a scant tablespoon of cornstarch. It is there as insurance against separation, so err generously.
- A glass of beerGenuinely vague in the original. Start with 1/2 cup and add more only if the sauce is too stiff; a whole 12-ounce bottle will thin it past spreading consistency. A malty ale or brown beer suits it better than a strongly hoppy one, whose bitterness can come through.
- The eggBeaten into the cold cream and starch before any heat, which is the right order — it tempers as the mixture warms and thickens rather than scrambling. Take the sauce to visible thickening rather than pulling it early if you want the egg properly cooked.
- SeasoningSalt cautiously; a pound of aged cheddar carries a great deal already. "Paprika liberally" is period style — a teaspoon or more, for colour as much as flavour. A little dry mustard and a few drops of Worcestershire are the usual modern additions.
- Yield and servingA pound of cheese serves six to eight over toast as a light supper or lunch dish. Make it at the last moment: rarebit sets firm and reheats badly, splitting on the second pass.
Welsh rarebit — earlier and more honestly "Welsh rabbit" — is generally read as an eighteenth-century English joke at Welsh expense, the cheese standing in for the meat a poor household could not afford; the genteel respelling to "rarebit" came later. By the time this book appeared, the dish had become a fixture of American chafing-dish cookery, the sort of thing served at late suppers and ladies' luncheons because it could be made at the table over a spirit lamp. Two details help place it: the specification of New York cream cheese, when regional cheddar names still meant something to a shopper, and the dark caraway rye, which points to the German and Central European bakeries found in American cities around 1900. Its appearance in the entree section of a flour company's cookbook is a reminder that "entree" then meant a made dish between courses, not the centre of the meal.