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Cheese Appetizer
2 cupfuls (1/2 lb.) cheese 2 eggs I heaping tablespoonful (I Some crackers oz.) butter I can tomato soup 1 saltspoonful salt 1½ saltspoonful paprika Cut the cheese into small pieces, then melt it in a fireproof dish, add the butter, seasonings, and tomato soup. When well mixed, add the eggs well beaten.
Stir until it begins to thicken, and serve at once on buttered crackers.
A chafing-dish rarebit in all but name, thickened with egg rather than flour. It comes together in a few minutes and punishes inattention.
- The hinge: gentle heatOnce the beaten eggs go in, the mixture is a custard and will scramble over direct high heat. Keep the pan low and stir constantly, pulling it off the burner the moment it coats the spoon.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So: 1/4 teaspoon salt and a scant 1/2 teaspoon paprika.
- "Fireproof dish"Here it must be a flameproof vessel used on the stovetop, earthenware or enamelled, rather than a baking dish, since the cheese is melted in it. A heavy saucepan or an enamelled cast-iron pot does the same job.
- The can of tomato soupMost likely condensed soup, which came in a can of roughly 10 oz, close to today's standard size. If condensed, use it undiluted; adding water would give a thin, soupy result.
- The cheeseHalf a pound of a firm cheddar or American cheese suits the method, though the recipe names no variety. The original says to cut it into small pieces; grating instead makes it melt faster and more evenly.
- Temper the eggsBeat the eggs, then stir a ladleful of the hot cheese mixture into them before returning everything to the pan. Dumping cold eggs into hot cheese is the usual cause of a grainy, separated appetizer.
- Serve immediatelyIt thickens further as it cools and turns stiff and oily if held. Have the crackers buttered and laid out before the eggs go in.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; half a pound of cheese with a can of soup would stretch to perhaps six to eight small servings on crackers, or fewer as a light supper over toast.
Cheese melted with a liquid and served hot on toast or crackers is the Welsh rarebit family, and this is a tomato-soup variant of it, popular in the American chafing-dish craze of the 1890s and 1900s when middle-class hosts cooked at the table over a spirit lamp. The canned tomato soup is the giveaway of date -- condensed soup became a cheap pantry staple in the United States around the turn of the century, and cookbook writers folded it into sauces and cheese dishes as a shortcut to acidity, color and body. Egg rather than flour is the thickener here, and it is why the recipe insists on serving at once.