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Cheese Straws No. 1
4 ounces of flour 2 ounces of grated cheese A pinch each of cayenne, pounded mace and salt 2 ounces of butter Rub the butter into the flour. Mix the cheese and the other ingredients well together. Add as much water as will form a stiff paste. Roll out about a quarter of an inch thick. Cut into fingers four inches long and half an inch wide. Bake them for five minutes in a hot oven, and serve cold.
A short, dry cheese pastry of the sort kept on hand for soup service or the savoury course. The proportions are given by weight, which is worth keeping: this dough is stiff and unforgiving of extra water.
- The weights in cups4 oz flour is about 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons; 2 oz butter is half a stick; 2 oz grated cheese is roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup loosely packed. Weighing is more reliable here, since the fat-to-flour ratio is what makes the straws short rather than tough.
- "A hot oven"No temperature is given; in cookery of this period the phrase is usually taken to mean somewhere in the region of 400-450F. At the hotter end five minutes may well be enough for straws this size, but go by colour -- pale gold at the edges -- rather than the clock.
- The cheeseA dry, well-aged Cheddar or another hard grating cheese suits this best. Anything moist or young will weep fat and leave the straws limp. Grate it finely so it disperses through the small quantity of flour.
- Water, sparingly"As much water as will form a stiff paste" is likely 1 to 2 tablespoons, no more. Add it a teaspoon at a time; the cheese and butter already carry moisture, and a wet dough bakes into something bready rather than crisp.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold ground or as blades. Ground mace from a jar substitutes directly; a pinch means a pinch, as it will dominate the cheese if overdone.
- Cutting and thicknessA quarter inch is thicker than most modern cheese straws and gives a short, biscuit-like bite. Roll thinner, to about an eighth of an inch, if you want the brittle snap that the name now suggests.
- Yield and keepingThis quantity makes roughly two dozen four-inch fingers. Served cold, as directed, they hold their crispness for two or three days in a tin; they go soft in a plastic container.
Cheese straws belong to the savoury course, the small salted dish that closed a formal English dinner after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, a sequence that persisted in Britain long after it was abandoned elsewhere. They also served as an accompaniment to soup and to a glass of sherry. The cayenne-and-mace seasoning is characteristic of Victorian and Edwardian savouries generally. Recipes with similar proportions of flour, butter and grated cheese appear to recur across late nineteenth-century English cookbooks, which may suggest a formula passed between compilers rather than one traceable to any single author.