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Cheese and Tomato Toast
A slice of buttered toast 4 tablespoons of tomato puree Pepper and salt Make a slice of toast an inch thick from a square loaf, and butter it well. Put the tomato puree in a small stewpan with the grated cheese and a little pepper. Stir over the fire until the butter is melted; then spread evenly over the toast, and serve as hot as possible.
A one-pan cheese-and-tomato spread on thick toast, from the era when a "savoury" course closed the meal. The ingredient list is incomplete, so a little judgement is needed.
- The missing quantityGrated cheese appears in the method but never in the ingredient list, so the original gives no amount. Roughly 2 to 3 oz of a firm, dry cheese to 4 tablespoons of puree gives a spread that holds together rather than running off the toast.
- "Until the butter is melted"There is no butter in the pan; the instruction almost certainly means until the cheese has melted, the butter belonging to the toast. Take it off the heat as soon as the cheese has gone smooth.
- Do not let it boil hardThis is the hinge. Cheese held over direct heat past melting point breaks and turns grainy with a pool of oil. Low heat, constant stirring, and off the fire the moment it comes together.
- Tomato pureeTomato puree of this period was generally a thin sieved pulp, closer to modern passata than to the concentrated tube paste sold today. If using paste, thin it with water or stock to a pourable sauce or the result will be harshly acidic.
- Cheese to chooseA dry aged Cheddar, Cheshire or Lancashire melts to the right consistency. Young, high-moisture cheeses give a stringy mass that will not spread.
- An inch-thick sliceThe recipe specifies that thickness, which helps the toast stay crisp under a wet topping. Toast it through rather than browning only the surface, or the middle will go sodden.
- YieldOne slice as written, a single savoury or light supper portion. It scales directly, but assemble and serve each slice immediately since the mixture stiffens as it cools.
Cheese on toast in its many guises filled the "savoury" slot in British meals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a small hot, salty dish served after the sweet and before the dessert of fruit and nuts. Tinned and bottled tomato puree became more widely available in Britain in the decades either side of 1900, and cooks often used it much as they used anchovy or Worcestershire sauce, as a bought flavouring to lift a plain dish rather than as a fresh vegetable.