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Cheese Cakes (Tablespoons butter tablespoons)
3 tablespoons butter 4 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 4 tablespoons grated American cheese Melt the butter, add the flour, and stir until well mixed; then add the grated cheese. Season with salt and cayenne. Drop from tip of spoon on a buttered sheet one inch apart, and bake in a moderate oven.
These are savoury cheese wafers, not the sweet cheesecake the name now suggests. The mixture is a stiff paste rather than a batter, and the whole thing goes from pale to burnt in a minute or two.
- The hinge: it is a paste, not a batterThere is no liquid and no egg, so the butter alone binds the flour and cheese. The recipe melts the butter, so the mixture is soft enough to drop from a spoon and stiffens as it cools; it will barely spread on its own, so press each portion down slightly with a fingertip or the back of a spoon.
- "American cheese"In a book of this vintage this means domestic factory cheddar, not the processed slices sold under the name today. Use a sharp or medium yellow cheddar and grate it finely so it melts evenly through the flour.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Ten to twelve minutes is likely enough; watch them and pull them when the edges have just coloured, as the cheese browns fast.
- The saltA full teaspoon against four tablespoons of flour and a salted cheese is heavy by modern palates. A quarter to half a teaspoon is closer to the mark, adjusted to how salty the cheddar is.
- Cayenne"Few grains" means a pinch, an eighth of a teaspoon at most. It is there for warmth behind the cheese rather than heat you can identify.
- Baking sheetA buttered sheet works, but parchment is easier since the cheese fat renders out and the wafers stick as they cool. Lift them off while still warm and finish cooling on a rack so they crisp.
- YieldThe quantities give roughly eighteen to twenty-four small wafers, an inch across. They are an accompaniment to soup or salad rather than a dish in themselves, and are best the day they are made.
Small baked cheese pastes of this sort ran under a great many names in Anglo-American cookery around 1900 -- biscuits, straws, wafers, and confusingly "cheese cakes," a name more usually attached to sweet curd tarts. The recipe also reflects the moment when American factory cheddar had become cheap and uniform enough that a cookbook could simply say "American cheese" and expect the reader to know what to buy.