Home › Some Kitchen Kinks › Some Kitchen Kinks: Calculated
Some Kitchen Kinks: Calculated
Made with skimmed milk and without butter, this dish has a food value slightly in excess of a pound of beef and a pound of potatoes. Calculated cost about 20 cents. Welsh Rabbit. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 teaspoonful of cornstarch. ½ cupful of milk. 1/2 pound of cheese, cut into small pieces. 1/4 teaspoonful each of salt and mustard.
A speck of cayenne pepper.
Cook the cornstarch in the butter; then add the milk gradually and cook two minutes; add the cheese and stir until it is melted. Season and serve on crackers or bread toasted on one side, the rabbit being poured over the untoasted side. Food value is that of about three-fourths of pound of beef. Calculated cost, 13 cents. a Tomato Rabbit. 2 tablespoonsful of butter. 2 tablespoonsful of flour. 3/4 cupful of milk. 3/4 cupful of stewed and strained tomatoes. 1/8 teaspoonful of soda. 1 pound of cheese 2 eggs, slightly beaten.
Salt, mustard, cayenne pepper.
Cook the butter and the flour together, add the milk, and as soon as the mixture thickens add tomatoes and soda. Then add cheese, eggs, and seasoning. Serve on toasted whole wheat or Graham bread.
Green Corn, Tomato, and Cheese. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 2 cups of grated cheese. 3/4 cup of canned or grated fresh corn.
I ripe pimiento. 1/2 cup of tomato purée. 2 egg yolks. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1/2 teaspoonful of paprika. 1 clove of garlic. 4 slices of bread.
Into the melted butter stir the cheese until it, too, is melted. Then add the corn and pimiento, stir for a moment and add the egg yolks beaten and mixed with the tomato juice and the salt and paprika. Have ready the bread toasted on one side and very lightly rubbed on its untoasted side with the garlic cut in two. Pour the mixture over the untoasted side of the bread and serve at once. A poached egg is sometimes placed on top of each portion, making a very nutritious combination. Macaroni and Cheese No. I. 1 cupful of macaroni, broken into small pieces. 2 quarts of boiling water. 1 cupful of milk. 2 tablespoonsful of flour. 14 to ½ pound of cheese. ½ teaspoonful of salt.
Speck of cayenne pepper.
Cook the macaroni in the boiling salted water, drain in a strainer, and pour cold water over it to prevent the pieces from adhering to each other. Make a sauce out of the flour, milk, and cheese. Put the sauce and macaroni in alternate layers in in a buttered baking dish, cover with buttered crumbs, and heat in oven until crumbs are brown. a Macaroni and Cheese No. II.
A good way to prepare macaroni and cheese is to make a rich cheese sauce and heat the macaroni in it.
The mixture is usually covered with buttered crumbs and browned in the oven. The advantage of this way of preparing the dish, however, is that it is unnecessary to have a hot oven, as the sauce and macaroni may be reheated on the top of the stove.
Macaroni with Cheese and Tomato Sauce.
Boiled macaroni may be heated in tomato sauce and sprinkled with grated cheese just before serving.
Italian Macaroni and Cheese. 1 cupful of macaroni broken into small pieces. 2 quarts of boiling salted water. 1/2 onion. 2 cloves. 11½ cupsful of tomato sauce. 1/2 cupful or more of grated cheese.
Cook the macaroni in the boiling salted water with the onion and cloves. Drain, remove the onion and cloves, reheat in tomato sauce, and serve with grated cheese.
Cheese and Macaroni Loaf. 1/2 cupful of macaroni broken into small pieces. 1 cupful of milk. 1 cupful of soft bread crumbs. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 tablespoonful of chopped green pepper. 1 teaspoonful each of chopped onion and parsley. 3 eggs. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1/2 cupful of grated cheese.
Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until tender, and rinse in cold water. Cook the parsley, onion, and pepper in a little water with the butter. Pour off the water or allow it to boil away. Beat the egg, white and yolk separately. Mix all the ingredients, cutting and folding in the stiffly beaten whites at the last. Line a quart baking dish with buttered paper; turn the mixture into it; set the baking dish in a pan of hot water, and bake in a moderate oven from one-half to three-fourths of an hour. Serve with tomato sauce.
Baked Rice and Cheese No. I. 1 cupful of uncooked rice and 4 cupsful of milk; or, 3 cupsful of cooked rice and 1 cupful of milk. 2 tablespoonsful of flour. 1/2 pound of cheese. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt.
If uncooked rice is used, it should be cooked in 3 cupsful of milk.
Make a sauce with one cupful of milk, add the flour, cheese, and salt.
Into a buttered baking dish put alternate layers of the cooked rice and the sauce. Cover with buttered crumbs and bake until the crumbs are brown. The proteids in this dish, made with rice cooked in milk, are equal to those of nearly 1¾ pounds of average beef. If skimmed milk is used, the fuel value is equal to nearly 31½ pounds of beef.
Whole milk raises the fuel value still higher. Estimated cost 28 cents.
Baked Rice and Cheese No. II. 1/4 pound of cheese grated or cut into small pieces. 1 cupful of rice.
Milk as needed.
APPENDIX Cook the rice; put into a buttered baking dish alternate layers of rice and cheese; pour over them enough milk is used to pour over it, this the rice; cover with buttered crumbs and brown.
If the rice is cooked in milk either whole or skimmed, and one cup of milk is used to pour over it, this dish has as much protein as 1¼ pounds of beef of average composition. and a much higher fuel value. + Baked Crackers and Cheese No. I. 9 or 10 butter crackers or Bocton crackers. ¼ pound of cheese or 1 cupful of grated cheese. 11½ cupsful of milk. 1/4 teaspoonful of salt.
Flour.
Split the crackers, if the thick sort are selected, or with a sharp knife cut them into pieces of uniform size.
Pour the milk over them and drain it off at once. With the milk, flour, cheese, and salt, make a sauce.
Into a a buttered baking dish put alternate layers of the soaked crackers and sauce. Cover with bread crumbs and brown in the oven, or simply reheat without covering with trumbs.
The above is a very satisfactory substitute for macaroni and cheese, and can be prepared in less time.
Baked Crackers and Cheese No. II. 9 or 10 butter crackers or soda crackers. 2 cupsful of hot milk, whole or skimmed. 1 cupful of grated cheese. 1/4 teaspoonful of salt.
This is more quickly prepared than the preceding recipe, but as the milk is likely to curdle, it has not so good a consistency.
Soak the crackers in the milk; place them in a buttered baking dish in alternate layers with the cheese; pour the remaining milk over them and bake. This dish may be covered with buttered crumbs. Variety may be secured, in either this recipe or the preceding one, by putting a very small amount of mixed mustard or each cracker.
Cheese Rolls.
A large variety of rolls may be made by combining legumes, either beans of various kinds, cowpeas, lentils, or peas, with cheese of various kinds, and adding bread crumbs to make the mixture thick enough to form into a roll. Beans are usually mashed, but peas or small Lima beans may be combined whole with bread crumbs and grated cheese, and enough of the liquor in which the vegetables have been cooked may be added to get the right consistency.
Or, instead of beans or peas, chopped spinach, beet tops, or head lettuce may be used. Home-made cottage cheese, and the soft cream cheese of commerce, standard cheese, or English dairy may be used.
A run of cheese suppers from the economy chapters of a period household manual, built around a single technique: a flour- or cornstarch-thickened milk sauce carrying melted cheese. Most of the differences between the entries are in what gets layered under it.
- Keep the cheese below a simmerThis is the hinge for every dish here. Once the milk has thickened, take the pan off the heat before the cheese goes in and stir until it melts in the residual heat. Boiling cheese sauce squeezes out fat and turns the mass stringy and grainy.
- What "cheese" means hereUnqualified "cheese" in a book of this period usually means a firm American factory cheddar, though the last entry on the page shows other cheeses (home-made cottage, soft cream cheese, "standard," English dairy) were also in use. A block cheddar you grate yourself works; pre-shredded cheese is coated with starch and anti-caking agents and thickens the sauce unpredictably.
- The soda in the tomato rabbitThe 1/8 teaspoonful of soda neutralises tomato acid so the milk does not curdle. Do not increase it -- more than a pinch gives a soapy, metallic taste and dulls the tomato.
- Eggs in the rabbit and the corn dishWhisk the beaten eggs or yolks with a ladle of the hot sauce first, then return the mixture to the pan off the heat. Adding them straight to a hot pan scrambles them into threads.
- Oven temperaturesThe book says "moderate oven" only once, for the cheese and macaroni loaf; in modern terms that is around 350F for the stated one-half to three-fourths of an hour in its water bath. The crumb-topped dishes are given no temperature at all -- the contents are already cooked, so they need only enough heat, and enough time, to brown the crumbs.
- Butter crackersButter crackers, Boston crackers and soda crackers of the period were the plain, fairly thick, lightly salted sort; a modern common cracker, or a saltine at a pinch, is the nearest thing. The book offers the cracker dish as a substitute for macaroni and cheese, and as quicker to prepare, rather than as a measured equivalent.
- Macaroni quantitiesOne cupful of dry broken macaroni is about 4 oz and yields roughly 2 cups cooked. Cook it a minute short of tender, since it goes back into a hot sauce and then the oven.
- The garlic rubIn the green corn and cheese dish the garlic never enters the pan: a cut clove is dragged once over the soft side of the toast. Mincing it in instead gives a much harsher dish than intended.
- Costs and "food value"The 13-, 20- and 28-cent figures and the comparisons to pounds of beef come from early nutrition tables used to argue that cheese was a cheap protein substitute for meat. They are historical arithmetic, not present-day nutrition or prices.
- YieldThe book states no yields. The green corn, tomato and cheese dish is built on four slices of bread, so four portions; the loaf baked in a quart dish will cut into four to six slices.
These entries belong to the era when American home economists were teaching households to treat cheese as a meat substitute, costed out to the cent and weighed against "a pound of average beef" using the food-value tables then coming out of the agricultural experiment stations. Welsh rabbit is the oldest thing in the group -- recorded in English cookery from the eighteenth century, its name generally taken as a joke at Welsh expense, the melted cheese standing in for game that a poor household could not get; the "rarebit" spelling is a later genteel correction. The tomato rabbit and the corn-and-pimiento version are American extensions of it, and the appearance of canned corn, tomato puree and a ripe pimiento marks the recipes as post-canning-industry. Macaroni had by this date been familiar in American kitchens long enough to have shed its foreign associations except where the book flags a dish as Italian -- meaning, here, simply that it is sauced with tomato rather than bound with cheese sauce.