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Cheese Custard
1 cup grated cheese 1/2 cup cream or rich milk 4 whites of eggs A speck of salt and paprika Mix the cream and the cheese, and heat until the cheese is melted. Remove from the fire, and add the eggs. Bake in paper cases or buttered ramequins. Serve with the jelly or preserves.
A small savoury custard built on egg whites alone, from a chapter designed to use up the whites left over when a recipe called only for yolks. It needs a gentle oven and a watchful eye.
- The hinge: gentle heatEgg white sets firmer and at a slightly lower temperature than yolk, and cheese tightens as it cooks. The original gives no oven setting; a low oven (around 325F) and a pan of hot water are a safe modern reading. Pull the custards while the centres still wobble -- roughly 20 to 25 minutes for small ramekins -- as a set, dry centre will be rubbery.
- Melting the cheeseWarm the cream and cheese over low heat only until smooth. If it boils, the cheese breaks and weeps fat, and no amount of baking will bring it back.
- Cool before the eggs go inThe instruction to remove from the fire is not incidental. Let the mixture drop to lukewarm or the whites will scramble in threads as they hit it.
- Beaten or not?The original does not say. Whites stirred in plain give a dense, sliceable custard; whites beaten to soft peaks and folded give a light, souffle-like puff that settles on cooling. Both are period-plausible.
- Paper casesPeriod paper cases were small buttered cases of stiff paper, often folded by the cook; modern pleated souffle papers are the nearest equivalent, and buttered 4 oz ramekins set in a roasting pan of hot water are the practical substitute.
- The cheese'Grated cheese' is unspecified; a firm dry cheddar or factory cheese would suit, and Parmesan gives a sharper note. A cup grated runs roughly 3 to 4 oz depending on the cheese and how fine the grating.
- SeasoningA speck is a pinch. Cheese brings its own salt, so season after tasting the warmed cream and cheese, not before.
- Yield and servingFour to six small ramekins, enough for four as a light course. The jelly or preserves alongside reads as a sweet-tart contrast, in the way currant jelly was served with meat.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world in the years around the First World War, when meat was scarce, expensive, or under voluntary rationing, and when vegetarianism on health and moral grounds had a growing following. Cheese and eggs carried the protein load in such books, and recipes calling for whites of eggs alone reflect a kitchen economy in which nothing was thrown out: yolks went into custards, mayonnaise and rich sauces, and the accumulated whites had to be found a use before they spoiled. Serving a savoury cheese custard with jelly or preserves looks odd now, but it follows the same logic that put currant jelly beside mutton and cranberry beside turkey.