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Cheese Straws
Cheese straws are particularly nice, and look very dainty. To make them have 3 ounces of grated cheese, 2 ounces of flour, 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, the yolk of 1 egg and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Rub all the dry ingredients together, then add the yolk and mix to a paste; turn out on a floured baking board, roll out very thinly; cut part of the paste into neat strips about 3 inches long and the rest into rings. Bake on a greased tin until yellow and crisp in a moderate oven, and serve piled high, the straws being laid into the rings. They may be eaten hot or cold.
A short, workable pastry that behaves like a rich shortcrust with cheese standing in for part of the flour. The proportions are unusual — more cheese than flour by weight — so the dough is fragile and wants a cold hand.
- The hinge: keep everything coldWith 3 oz cheese to 2 oz flour there is very little structure holding this together. Rub the butter in cold, and if the paste softens while you roll, chill it flat for 15 minutes before cutting or the strips will tear and spread.
- Weights, not cups3 oz grated cheese is roughly 3/4 cup loosely packed; 2 oz flour is a scant 1/2 cup. The 2 tablespoons of butter come to about 1 oz. Use a scale if you have one — the ratio is what makes these work.
- Which cheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese", and a dry, hard, well-aged cheese is what the method assumes. A sharp aged Cheddar or Parmesan, or a mix, gives the flavour and the low moisture needed. Young supermarket cheddar or anything pre-shredded with anti-caking starch will make the paste greasy and slack.
- "A moderate oven"350F. At that heat, straws rolled thin take 8 to 12 minutes — watch them from 8, since they go from pale gold to bitter quickly at this cheese-to-flour ratio.
- How thin is "very thinly"About 1/8 inch. Roll between two sheets of parchment if the dough fights you, and cut the strips about 1/3 inch wide. The rings should be roughly 1 1/2 inches across, cut with two round cutters or a small cutter and a thimble.
- Binding the pasteOne yolk may not bring 5 oz of dry ingredients together, depending on egg size and how dry the cheese is. A teaspoon or two of ice water is the usual remedy and does no harm.
- The seasoningCayenne appears alongside salt and pepper in many period cheese straw recipes, though not in this one. A good pinch lifts them considerably and is in keeping.
- Yield and servingThis quantity makes several dozen thin straws and a number of rings. The recipe has the straws piled high and laid into the rings, which is the reason for cutting the rings at all. They will keep for a few days in a tin and revive with a couple of minutes in a warm oven.
Cheese straws belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian savoury course, the small salty dish served after the sweet and before dessert at a formal English dinner — a convention that also gave us angels on horseback and Scotch woodcock. The bundle-and-ring presentation, which turns a plain cheese pastry into something that looks arranged, is the reason the writer calls them "dainty"; it is a piece of table dressing as much as cooking. A few ounces of cheese, a spoonful or two of butter and a single yolk produce something that reads as a genteel course. The form is generally said to have crossed to the United States and settled in the South, where cheese straws became a fixture of parties and remain one, usually piped rather than rolled and cut.