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Cheese on Toast
2 ounces of grated cheese 2 tablespoons milk A slice of buttered toast Pepper, salt and mustard Grate two ounces of any kind of dry cheese, or, if the cheese is too new to grate, put through a ricer. Put the cheese in a small stewpan with the milk, and very little salt, pepper and mustard. Stir over the fire or a gas-ring until it is quite melted. Have ready a piece of buttered toast about four inches square. Pour the cheese evenly over the toast, and serve as quickly as possible on a hot water dish.
A one-serving supper dish that depends entirely on gentle heat: 2 ounces of cheese and 2 tablespoons of milk will not hold together if the pan gets hot.
- The hinge: low heatThe hinge: low heat. Once the mixture approaches a simmer the cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat, leaving stringy curds in a greasy puddle. Take it off the heat while it is still glossy and pourable. The recipe's "stir over the fire or a gas-ring" names the heat source rather than the setting, so the gentleness is left to the cook.
- Choice of cheese"Any kind of dry cheese" points to a firm aged cheese — Cheddar, Cheshire, Lancashire, Gruyère. Pre-shredded supermarket cheese is dusted with anti-caking starch and behaves differently; grate from a block.
- Too new to grateThe ricer trick handles a soft, moist young cheese that would smear on a grater. A food processor pulse does the same job, or simply cut it into small dice.
- The mustardThe recipe does not specify a form; dry mustard powder was the common British kitchen staple of the period, and a small pinch is enough. Mustard is often credited with helping hold the mixture together as well as adding flavour. Prepared mustard works but adds vinegar and thins the mixture.
- Salt"Very little salt" is deliberate — aged cheese and buttered toast both carry salt already. Season at the end if at all.
- A hot water dishA double-walled serving plate filled with hot water, a standard nineteenth- and early twentieth-century answer to food going cold between kitchen and table. A warmed plate does the same thing.
- Timing and yieldOne slice, one person; figure two or three minutes at the stove. It cannot be held or reheated, so make it per portion and eat it standing up if need be.
- Toast firstButter the toast while hot so it soaks in, then pour immediately. Toast left waiting turns leathery and the cheese sets on top of it rather than into it.
Melted cheese on toast is one of the oldest hot suppers in the English kitchen, recorded under the name Welsh rabbit from the early eighteenth century — the name is often said to be a joke about cheese standing in for meat on a poor man's table, and the later polite respelling "rarebit" is traditionally explained as the work of people who missed the joke. This version keeps the plainest possible form: no ale, no egg, no oven finish, just cheese slackened with milk and seasoned with mustard. Books of vegetarian and meatless cookery multiplied in Britain and America around the First World War, when meat was expensive or rationed and cheese was cheap, and toast dishes gave cooks a way to put something hot and savoury on the table in five minutes.