Home › Meat Substitutes › Baked Cheese, German Dish
Baked Cheese, German Dish
4 ounces cheese 1/2 ounce butter 1/4 pint milk 1 onion or shallot the size of a filbert Pepper and salt If the cheese is fresh, it may be cut into thin slices, but if dry it must be grated. Place it at the bottom of a shallow baking dish. Slice the onion, and throw it into cold water; bring it quickly to a boiling point, and let it boil one minute, then drain it, and mince it finely, and sprinkle it over the cheese with the seasoning. Pour the milk over the cheese, and bake it in a hot oven until it sets. Sprinkle the top with bread raspings. Return it to the oven for one minute, and serve as hot as possible.
A small, plain cheese custard of the sort Edwardian books filed under savouries. It is worth reading the method twice, since the butter in the ingredient list never reappears in the instructions.
- The measures4 ounces of cheese is about a cup grated; 1/2 ounce of butter is a tablespoon. The 1/4 pint of milk is an imperial quarter-pint, 5 fluid ounces, or roughly 2/3 cup US.
- An onion the size of a filbertA filbert is a hazelnut, so this means a very small shallot or a scrap of onion, yielding perhaps a tablespoon minced. It is a seasoning, not a vegetable component.
- The missing butterThe method never uses it. The obvious remedy is to butter the baking dish and dot the remainder over the top before the crumbs go on.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in books of this period is generally reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. That is fierce for a milk-and-cheese mixture, which will curdle and weep oil if pushed; 375F until just set, with a final blast under the grill for the crumbs, gives a smoother result.
- Knowing when it setsThe hinge is stopping while the centre still has a faint wobble. Cheese proteins tighten quickly, and an extra five minutes turns the dish from soft custard into a rubbery raft sitting in its own fat.
- Bread raspingsRaspings are the dried outer crusts of a stale loaf, grated or pounded to a coarse powder. Dry breadcrumbs, toasted a shade in the oven, are the same thing.
- Which cheeseThe recipe does not say; a firm cheese such as Cheddar or Cheshire suits the method, and "fresh" here appears to mean young and sliceable rather than soft or unripened. A drier, low-moisture cheese melts more cleanly than a rubbery mild block.
- Blanching the onionThe one-minute boil strips the raw sulphur bite so the onion perfumes the milk instead of dominating it. Drain it well, or the extra water will loosen the set.
- YieldEnough for two as a light supper with bread, or four as a small savoury course. It must go to the table straight from the oven; it stiffens and turns greasy as it cools.
Cheese carried much of the weight in meatless cookery: it was the cheapest concentrated substitute for a meat course, and books of this kind are thick with cheese puddings, ramekins, fondues and toasted savouries. The "German" label attached to dishes like this one is loose Victorian shorthand rather than a documented provenance, applied to baked cheese preparations from across northern Europe much as "Swiss" was applied to anything involving melted cheese and "Welsh" to cheese on toast. The technique of blanching an onion for a minute before mincing it is a period habit worth noticing, from an era when cooks routinely tamed them with a scald. Served in a small hot dish at the end of dinner, this would have counted as a savoury; served with bread at midday, it was simply cheap dinner.