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Green Corn, Tomato and Cheese
1 tablespoon butter 2 cups of grated cheese 3/4 cup canned or grated fresh corn 1 ripe pimento 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon paprika 1 clove of garlic 4 slices of bread 1/2 cup of tomato puree Into the melted butter, stir the cheese until it, too, is melted. Then add the corn and pimento, stir for a moment, and add the tomato juice, the salt and paprika. Have ready the bread toasted on one side, and very lightly rubbed on its untoasted side the garlic cut in two. Pour the mixture over the untoasted side of the bread, and serve at once.
A cheese rarebit dressed up with corn, pimento and tomato, served on garlic-rubbed toast. The whole dish stands or falls on how gently the cheese is treated.
- Keep the heat lowTwo cups of cheese melted in a single tablespoon of butter will break into oil and rubber if it gets hot. Use a double boiler or the lowest possible flame, and stir constantly; the mixture should never approach a simmer.
- Green cornThis means fresh sweet corn at the milk stage, cut from the cob, not a green-coloured variety. Three-quarters of a cup is roughly the yield of one large ear. Frozen kernels, thawed and drained, work as well as the canned corn the recipe allows.
- PimentoA ripe pimento is a sweet, thick-walled red pepper, almost always sold roasted and jarred today. One jarred pimento, drained and chopped, is what is wanted; a roasted red pepper is a close substitute.
- Puree or juiceThe ingredient list says tomato puree and the method says tomato juice. Puree is the safer reading, since half a cup of thin juice will loosen the cheese considerably. If you use juice, expect a sauce that soaks the toast rather than sitting on it.
- CheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese"; a firm, sharp American cheddar is the likeliest intention for a dish of this kind. Very old cheddar is prone to splitting, so a medium-sharp cheddar melts more smoothly. Grating rather than cubing, as the recipe specifies, helps it melt evenly.
- SaltA full teaspoon on top of two cups of cheese is heavy by current tastes. Salt at the end, after tasting.
- The toastToasting on one side only and rubbing the raw side with a cut garlic clove is deliberate: the soft side takes the garlic oil and absorbs the sauce, while the crisp underside keeps the slice from collapsing. Under a broiler this is easy; in a toaster it is not.
- YieldFour slices, so four small servings or two generous ones with a salad. It must go to the table immediately, as the sauce stiffens as it cools.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world around the First World War, when meat conservation was a matter of public campaigning as much as economy, and their "meat substitutes" chapters leaned hard on cheese and eggs as the protein of record. This dish sits comfortably within the large family of Welsh rarebits and cheese toasts that filled those pages: cheap, filling, quick on a gas ring, and requiring no butcher. The pimento is the period detail. Sweet pimento peppers, canned commercially in the United States from the 1910s, became a staple flavouring in American cheese cookery, and the pairing of pimento with grated cheese was already familiar enough by the 1910s that a cook would recognise it on sight. Adding corn and tomato turns a supper savoury into something closer to a full plate, which is precisely what a meat substitute was asked to be.