Home › Cheese Recipes › Welsh Rarebit
Welsh Rarebit
1/2 pint (I cup) grated American cheese I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 3 tablespoonfuls of milk, cream, or ale 1 teaspoonful made mustard Salt and red pepper to taste 1 egg Some hot buttered toast or crackers Melt the butter in a casserole, add the seasonings, and the cheese. When melted, add the milk, cream or ale; stir vigorously till smooth, add the egg well beaten quickly and pour over the buttered toast or crackers.
A chafing-dish standard written for a cook who already knew that melted cheese is a temperamental sauce. The instructions are sound; the vocabulary and the heat level need translating.
- "Casserole" means a saucepanIn this book the casserole is a flameproof pot used on the stovetop, not a covered baking dish. Use a small heavy saucepan or an enamelled pan over low heat, or a double boiler if your burner runs hot.
- Low heat is the hingeCheddar breaks and turns stringy and greasy above roughly 160F. Keep the pan barely warm, stir constantly, and pull it off the heat while it still looks slightly loose. A rarebit that has been allowed to bubble cannot be brought back.
- "American cheese"Here this means domestic Cheddar, not the processed slices sold under that name now. Use a sharp aged Cheddar, or a mix of Cheddar and a little Gruyere. Grate it yourself; the anti-caking starch on pre-shredded cheese makes a grainy sauce.
- Half a pint gratedThe recipe helpfully glosses this as one cup, which is about 4 oz of loosely grated cheese. It is a small quantity: this serves two, or one as a supper dish.
- "Made mustard" and "red pepper"Made mustard is prepared mustard from the jar, not dry powder. Red pepper is cayenne, used by the pinch. Both are traditional in rarebit and do real work against the fat of the cheese.
- The eggBeat it thoroughly and add it off the heat, stirring hard, so it thickens rather than scrambles. It will be only lightly cooked by the residual warmth of the cheese; use pasteurised eggs if that matters to you.
- AleIf you use ale rather than milk, choose something mild. A modern IPA will overwhelm three tablespoons' worth of everything else in the pan.
- The toastToast it firmly and butter it hot. Soft bread collapses under the sauce; the original offers crackers as an alternative.
Welsh rarebit is simply melted seasoned cheese on toast, and the name is the older joke rather than the older dish: eighteenth-century English sources record it as "Welsh rabbit," traditionally explained as a jab at a people said to be too poor for game, though that explanation is folk tradition rather than documented fact; "rarebit" appears later, apparently as a genteel correction. By the time this book was written it had become a familiar chafing-dish supper on both sides of the Atlantic, the thing a hostess made at the table after the theatre or at a late gathering. Its presence in a volume on casserole cookery is a reminder that a casserole then meant a vessel you could set over a flame, and that part of the appeal of these recipes was theatrical: the cooking happened in front of the guests, in the same dish it was served from.