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Cheese Sauce No. I
1 cup of milk 2 tablespoons flour 1 ounce of cheese--1/4 cup of grated cheese Salt and pepper Thicken the milk with the flour, and just before serving, add the cheese, stirring until it is melted.
This sauce is suitable to pour over toast, making a dish corresponding to ordinary milk toast, except for the presence of cheese. It may be seasoned with a little curry powder.
A plain white sauce with cheese stirred in off the heat. The recipe assumes you know how to thicken milk without lumps; everything else is straightforward.
- The hinge: cheese goes in off the heatThe hinge: the cheese goes in last -- The instruction "just before serving" matters more than it looks. Cheese boiled in a sauce can tighten and shed fat as oily beads. The recipe does not say to take the pan off the burner, but pulling it off and stirring the cheese in with the residual heat is the safest way to melt it.
- No fat is listedModern white sauce is built on a roux of equal butter and flour. Here the flour goes straight into the milk, which means it must be slaked first — mix the 2 tablespoons flour with a few tablespoons of cold milk to a smooth cream, then stir that into the rest of the milk as it heats. Adding dry flour to hot milk gives lumps.
- Two tablespoons to a cupThat is a medium sauce by the usual reckoning, nearer a coating consistency than a pouring one, which suits toast that will otherwise go soggy. For a thinner sauce over vegetables, drop to one and a half tablespoons.
- An ounce of cheeseThe recipe equates 1 oz with 1/4 cup grated, which holds for a dry aged cheese grated fine. A sharp cheddar is the usual reading; at this quantity the cheese is a seasoning rather than the body of the sauce, so use the sharpest you have.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powder was a familiar seasoning for bland milk sauces in this period. Stir it into the hot milk before the cheese goes in rather than sprinkling it on at the end. A quarter teaspoon is plenty for a cup.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to sauce two or three slices of toast; it is a scant amount for a dish of vegetables or macaroni.
Cheese sauce over toast is a thrifty relative of Welsh rabbit. The comparison the author draws "corresponding to ordinary milk toast, except for the presence of cheese" owas was as invald and supper food; cheese was the small upgrade that made it a meal. The suggested curry powder reflects the long English and American habit of using commercial curry blends as a general savoury seasoning, quite detached from any Indian dish.