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Cheese and Onion on Toast
A slice of buttered toast 2 ounces of grated cheese 1/2 pint of milk 1/2 pint of onions Pepper and salt Prepare the toast.
The onions must be weighed after they are peeled. Slice them, and throw them into cold water. Let them boil up quickly; then drain them well. Chop them a little, and put them with the milk, bringing them quickly to a boiling point; then stew gently until quite tender, which should be about half an hour. Season with pepper and salt, and add the cheese stirring until it is melted. Pour over the toast, and serve as hot as possible.
A cheese sauce built on stewed onions and poured over toast — closer to a creamed onion dish than to Welsh rabbit. Two things decide whether it works: the onions must be cooked down until genuinely soft, and the cheese must go in off the boil.
- The onion measurement"1/2 pint of onions" sits oddly beside the instruction to weigh them after peeling, and may be a misprint for half a pound. Half a pound (about 225 g, two medium onions) gives a workable ratio to the milk and cheese; a half-pint measured as volume of sliced onion would be appreciably less.
- Pint sizeIf the book is British, half a pint is 10 fl oz (1 1/4 cups). If American, 8 fl oz (1 cup). Either works; the smaller quantity gives a thicker, more assertive sauce.
- The blanching step"Let them boil up quickly, then drain" means bring the onions to a boil in the cold water and immediately tip them out. This strips the raw sulphurous edge so the milk tastes sweet rather than sharp. Do not skip it and do not let them soften in the water.
- Don't boil the cheeseAdd the grated cheese with the pan off the heat and stir until it melts. Held at a boil, the cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat, and the sauce turns grainy and oily.
- Milk and thirty minutesHalf an hour of gentle stewing will reduce the milk considerably and it may look slightly separated before the cheese goes in — normal. Use the lowest possible heat and stir often, as milk scorches on the bottom of the pan long before you smell it.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in a British book of this kind would most likely mean a firm dry English cheese such as Cheddar or Cheshire. A well-aged Cheddar suits it; young rubbery blocks give a stringy sauce, and pre-grated cheese carries anti-caking starch that dulls the texture.
- SeasoningSeason the onions before the cheese, then taste again at the end. Two ounces of mature Cheddar carries a good deal of salt on its own.
- The toastCut it thick and toast it dry and hard, then butter it. A thin slice collapses under this much sauce within a minute.
- YieldAs written this is one generous serving or two modest ones. Serve straight from the pan onto the toast, and eat at once — it stiffens as it cools.
Cheese melted over toast is one of the oldest things in the British savoury repertoire, the family that includes Welsh rabbit, buck rabbit and the countless nineteenth-century "toasted cheese" formulas served at the end of dinner or as a supper dish. This version belongs to a slightly different tradition: rather than melting cheese with ale or mustard, it starts from onions stewed in milk, a common invalid-cookery and plain-cookery preparation, and finishes it with cheese for body and savour. Cheese, milk and onions were a cheap protein-and-flavour combination that could stand in for a meat course. The whole dish costs pennies and cooks in one pan.