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Cheese (Lb cupfuls grated cheese I)
1/2 lb. (2 cupfuls) grated cheese 1 saltspoonful dry mustard I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 1/2 pint (I cup) milk 1/4 lb. (I cup) fine bread crumbs 2 eggs A dust of red pepper Melt the butter in a fireproof dish, add the milk, bread crumbs, cheese, mustard, and seasonings.
Stir constantly for five minutes, and then add the eggs well beaten.
Serve hot.
A stovetop cheese pudding built in the casserole itself — closer to a thick Welsh rabbit than to a baked soufflé. Everything depends on gentle heat.
- Low heat, alwaysCheese held above a bare simmer separates into oil and rubbery strings. Keep the dish over low heat and stir the whole five minutes; the mixture should thicken and look glossy, never bubble hard.
- "Fireproof dish"Here the dish clearly goes on direct heat, since the butter is melted in it. Period "fireproof" ware was usually glazed earthenware or stoneware, though the term was applied loosely. Modern glazed earthenware often cannot take a burner. Use an enamelled cast-iron or heavy stainless pan, or a flame-safe casserole with a heat diffuser.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. "A dust of red pepper" means cayenne, a pinch — it is there to sharpen the cheese, not to be tasted as heat. Salt is implied by "seasonings"; add about half a teaspoon.
- The cheeseA firm dry cheese was intended — aged Cheddar, Cheshire or Lancashire. Two cupfuls grated is roughly 8 oz. Avoid pre-shredded cheese, which is dusted with anti-caking starch and goes grainy in a sauce this thick.
- CrumbsA quarter pound of fine bread crumbs measured as one cup means dry crumbs, not fresh. Fresh crumbs weigh far less and will give a slack mixture; if that is all you have, use about 2 cups loosely packed and expect a softer result.
- Adding the eggsBeat the eggs, then temper them: stir a ladleful of the hot cheese mixture into the eggs before returning everything to the pan. Added cold and straight in, they scramble in threads.
- Finish the eggs properlyThe recipe stops at "add the eggs well beaten," which leaves them barely set. Keep stirring over low heat another two or three minutes until the mixture visibly thickens and reads 160F, or slide the dish into a 350F oven for 10 to 15 minutes until puffed and just firm.
- YieldEnough for four as a light supper or savoury course, two as a main dish with a sharp green salad. It must go to the table at once; it stiffens and dulls as it cools.
Casserole cookery had a vogue in Britain and America, encouraged when manufacturers began selling glazed "fireproof" earthenware that could go from burner to oven to table — a real economy in fuel and washing-up. This particular dish belongs to the older English tradition of hot cheese savouries, the family that includes Welsh rabbit and the various "cheese fondues" of Victorian cookery, in which cheese is loosened with milk and bound with crumbs and egg rather than melted alone. Mustard and cayenne are the standard companions in that tradition; both are generally said to be there to cut the richness and bring up the flavour of a cheese that may have been past its best. Served at the end of a formal dinner it would have been the savoury course, after the sweet and before the dessert of fruit and nuts.