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Cheese Drops
2 1/2 tablespoons milk 1 teaspoon of butter 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese 1/4 teaspoon of salt 1 1/4 cups of flour Heat the butter and milk to boiling point, add the flour and salt, and stir thoroughly. Remove from the fire, add the cheese, and stir until well mixed. When cold, drop in small pieces in deep hot oil, and brown.
A very short formula that reads like a scaled-down cheese choux paste, but the printed proportions do not work as written. Read the first point before you start.
- The ratio is wrongTwo and a half tablespoons of milk cannot hydrate 1 1/4 cups of flour; you get dry crumbs, not a paste. One of the two figures must be a misprint: cooked cheese pastes of this type generally use roughly equal volumes of liquid and flour, so either the milk should be near 1 1/4 cups (with the butter raised to match) or the flour should be a small fraction of what is printed. If you keep the flour as printed, add liquid until you have a stiff paste that pulls from the pan.
- No eggsA true choux paste is bound and leavened by eggs beaten into the cooked flour panade. This recipe has none, so the drops will be dense and biscuit-like rather than hollow and puffed. If you want them light, beat in one or two eggs off the heat before the cheese.
- ParmesanIn American books of this period the name was applied loosely to hard grating cheese, often domestic, and it may well have been drier and saltier than fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano. If you grate your own, use it fine and go a little heavier, and taste before adding the full 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
- Deep hot oilThe original gives no temperature. Fry at 350-360F. Higher and the outside colours before the centre sets; these are dense enough that a browned exterior is not proof of a cooked interior. Break one open from the first batch to check.
- Size"Small pieces" means roughly teaspoon-sized, no larger than a walnut. Larger drops stay pasty in the middle.
- When coldCooling lets the paste stiffen so the drops hold their shape when they hit the oil. Do not fry a warm, slack paste.
- Yield and servingThe original gives no yield; expect a few dozen small drops depending on how much liquid you end up adding. Drain on paper, salt lightly if wanted, and serve hot as an accompaniment to soup or salad; they are best eaten straight away.
Cheese drops belong to the family of fried and baked cheese pastes built on a cooked flour-and-butter panade, the same base as French gougeres and the fritters that appear across nineteenth-century English and American cookery under names like cheese fritters and cheese balls. Parmesan in particular did double duty, since a small quantity of hard grating cheese gives a savoury, almost meaty depth out of proportion to its cost. The compressed, telegraphic style of the instructions here is typical of the period's cheaper compilations.