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Cheese Salad No. 2
1/4 pound of American cheese grated 1/2 pint whipped cream Salt and paprika 1/2 tablespoonful vegetable gelatine 2 tablespoonfuls of boiling water Dissolve the gelatine in the boiling water and strain. Mix the cheese with the whipped cream and season with salt and paprika. Add the gelatine and pour into a wet mold and allow it to become firm. Turn out on a dish and garnish with crisp lettuce leaves and serve with a cheese dressing.
A molded cheese mousse of the sort that filled the salad chapter of every early twentieth-century cookbook. Two of its ingredients no longer mean what they meant when it was written.
- Vegetable gelatine is agarVegetable gelatine is almost certainly agar -- the vegetarian substitute for animal gelatin, sold then as agar-agar in flakes, strips or coarse powder (some products marketed as "vegetable gelatine" were carrageen instead). Unlike gelatin it will not dissolve in water that has merely been boiled; it must be simmered in the liquid for several minutes, and it then sets at room temperature and quite firmly.
- Two tablespoonfuls of water is not enoughHalf a tablespoon of agar needs considerably more liquid than that to hydrate and simmer without scorching. Use about half a cup of water, simmer until no grains or flecks remain, strain, and reduce nothing else in the recipe; the extra liquid is easily carried by the cream.
- Timing is the hingeAgar begins to gel below roughly 100F, so the moment the strained liquid cools it stiffens. Have the cheese and cream mixed and waiting, add the hot agar in a thin stream while whisking, and get the mixture into the mold immediately or it will set in ropey threads.
- American cheeseIn this period the phrase meant plain factory-made cheddar, not the wrapped processed slices sold under the name now. Use a mild yellow cheddar, grated fine on the small holes so it disperses through the cream.
- Whipped creamHalf a pint is one cup; the recipe does not make clear whether that is measured before or after whipping, and either reading gives a workable mousse. Whip to soft peaks and fold it in rather than stirring, or the mousse turns dense.
- A wet moldRinsing the mold in cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the set cheese slide out. A ring mold or several small cups work; chill until firm, an hour or more, then dip the base briefly in warm water to release.
- Cheese dressingProbably a mayonnaise or boiled dressing enriched with grated or cream cheese, though the recipe as printed does not say. Any tangy cream-cheese dressing serves, and the salad wants acid alongside it.
- YieldFour small servings as a first-course salad, or six if molded in individual cups.
Molded salads bound with gelatin were a badge of a well-run kitchen in the decades either side of 1900. Vegetarian and meatless cookbooks had a particular problem with them, since ordinary gelatin is rendered from animal bones and hides, so their authors reached for agar-agar, a seaweed extract long used in Japanese cookery and, by the late nineteenth century, imported into Europe and America both for the table and for bacteriology labs. It was sold under the tidy euphemism "vegetable gelatine." The dish also reflects the period's enthusiasm for cheese as a meat substitute, promoted heavily in meatless and wartime conservation cookery on the grounds that it delivered comparable protein at lower cost.