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Welsh Rarebit
Cut up cheese fine and place in a saucepan with a little butter, add one or two spoonfuls beer, and boil till the cheese is well dissolved. Cut a slice of bread, pour on the cheese; season with pepper, salt, and catsup.--Mrs. S.
A four-line version of a dish that later cookbooks smothered in mustard and cream. The instruction that matters is the one the original glosses over: cheese held at a boil breaks and turns stringy.
- Do not boil it"Boil till the cheese is well dissolved" will give you a grainy pool of curd swimming in fat. Keep the pan over low heat and stir until the cheese has just melted into the beer, then take it off.
- Cheese to useA firm, sharp Cheddar or a Cheshire melts best here. Avoid pre-shredded bagged cheese, which is dusted with starch or cellulose and thickens into paste.
- "A spoonful"This receipt does not say whether a tea- or tablespoon is meant, and gives no quantity of cheese at all. Two tablespoons of beer to about 8 oz of grated cheese gives a sauce that pours; add more a teaspoon at a time if it is too stiff.
- The beerA brown ale or porter is closer to the period than a modern pale lager, and its slight sweetness carries the cheese. Very hoppy beers turn bitter when reduced.
- CatsupIn this period catsup often meant walnut, mushroom or tomato, all of them thinner and more savoury than modern ketchup. Mushroom or walnut ketchup, or a few drops of Worcestershire, is nearer the intended effect than a squeeze of the sweet red kind.
- The breadToast it, and toast it well. The recipe says only "cut a slice," but untoasted bread collapses under the sauce; a thick slice of firm white bread, dried out and browned, holds up.
- Finishing under heatMany later versions slide the assembled toast under a broiler for a minute to blister the top. The original stops short of this, but it does no harm and improves the surface.
- YieldAt the suggested 8 oz of cheese (the recipe itself gives no quantity), enough to dress two to three slices — a light supper or savoury course for two.
Welsh rarebit is melted cheese on toast given a joke of a name: the older form is "Welsh rabbit," recorded in English usage from the early eighteenth century, and the "rarebit" spelling is a later genteel correction of what is generally said to have been a slur \— the cheese standing in for the meat a poor Welsh household supposedly could not get, though that explanation remains conjectural. A related jest produced "Scotch woodcock." Its presence in a cookery book reflects the English savoury tradition that Southern kitchens kept up well into the nineteenth century: a small hot dish of cheese, eggs or anchovy served at the end of dinner or for a late supper. That this version is credited simply to "Mrs. S." is characteristic of the book.