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Cheese with Red Peppers
Melt two tablespoons butter, add four tablespoons chopped pepper, one half tablespoon chopped onion, one fourth cup grated cheese, one fourth cup cream, four eggs slightly beaten. Cook until well blended and serve on buttered slices of toast.
Chicken à la Crême Make a white sauce; add one and one half cups chicken meat, cut in cubes, one half cup mushrooms, cut in slices, and one red pepper, finely chopped. Add more seasoning if required and serve on hot toast.
Turkey, veal, lamb, or game may be served in this way. Chicken and Mushrooms à la Crême Melt two tablespoons butter; add two tablespoons flour, one cup cream, one half teaspoon salt. Add one cup each of cold cooked chicken, cut in pieces, and cold cooked sweetbreads, also cut in pieces.
Serve very hot on buttered toast. A few drops of Tabasco may be added.
Three chafing-dish preparations run together in one block of type: a soft egg-and-cheese scramble, a creamed chicken, and a richer chicken-and-sweetbread version. All three are built on the same idea — something hot and saucy spooned over buttered toast at the table.
- Read it as three recipesThe verbatim text has no paragraph breaks, so "Chicken à la Crême" and "Chicken and Mushrooms à la Crême" appear mid-line. Each is independent; nothing carries over from the cheese-and-pepper mixture.
- What "red pepper" meansHere it is most likely a sweet red pepper or a canned pimiento rather than a hot chile, though period books also use "red pepper" for cayenne. If you use canned pimiento, drain it well and cut the butter-and-pepper cooking short, since it is already soft.
- The hinge: low, gentle heatThe first recipe is a custard scramble, and a chafing dish over a spirit lamp gives exactly the weak heat it needs. On a modern burner use the lowest setting and pull the pan off while the eggs still look slightly loose — they will finish in their own heat. Rushing it curdles the cream and cheese into grains.
- Cheese"Grated cheese" is unspecified; a firm American or English cheddar is the likely intent. A quarter cup grated is about 1 oz. Avoid pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch; it goes gritty in a cream-and-egg base.
- The unspecified white sauceThe second recipe says only "make a white sauce." Use the proportions given in the third recipe: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup cream, 1/2 teaspoon salt. That is a medium sauce, thick enough to hold on toast.
- CreamPeriod "cream" is closest to today's light cream, about 18-20 percent fat; half-and-half is lighter still and will give a thinner result. Heavy cream works and is more forgiving of heat; whole milk will thin the sauce noticeably.
- SweetbreadsThese are veal thymus or pancreas, sold by butchers rather than supermarkets and usually frozen. The recipe assumes they arrive already "cold cooked" — traditionally soaked, blanched, trimmed of membrane and pressed before being cut up. If you cannot get them, the second recipe covers the same ground with mushrooms.
- YieldThe cheese-and-pepper mixture, with four eggs, serves two generously or four as a light course. Each creamed dish makes about three cups and serves four on toast.
Lowney's was a chocolate company, and its cook book was promotional literature, but by 1907 a chafing-dish chapter was a common fixture in general household books -- the alcohol-lamp pan had become fashionable equipment for late-evening suppers, club rooms and bachelor apartments, where cooking happened at the table. The dishes reflect that: everything is built from cooked meat, cream, eggs and toast, needs one pan and no oven, and can be finished while people watch. The red pepper points to canned pimiento, which was becoming available in American groceries in the early years of the century, and it turns up in chafing-dish recipes as much for its color against the pale sauce as for its flavor. Sweetbreads, now specialty-butcher territory, were then ordinary enough to be listed without explanation.