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Peppers and Cheese
2 ounces of cheese 1 tablespoon chopped peppers 1 tablespoon of butter Paprika, salt and mustard Melt the cheese in a saucepan with the butter, and add the finely chopped peppers and the seasoning to taste. Cook until well blended and serve on rounds of toast.
A two-ounce rarebit for one, from the era when a chafing dish stood on the sideboard. The whole thing hinges on keeping the heat low enough that the cheese never breaks.
- Scale and yieldTwo ounces of cheese and a tablespoon of butter cover two or three small toast rounds — one serving. Multiply freely, but keep the butter-to-cheese ratio, as it is what keeps the mixture pourable.
- The cheese"Cheese" unqualified in an American cookbook of this type most likely means a plain firm Cheddar. Grate or dice it before it goes in the pan; a block dropped in whole will overheat at the edges before the centre softens.
- Low heat, and stirMelt the butter first, then add the cheese off direct high heat and stir constantly. Above roughly 150F the proteins tighten and squeeze out the fat, and the mixture turns into a greasy string. A double boiler or a very low burner is the safe route.
- "Chopped peppers"Most likely green sweet peppers rather than chilies. Paprika supplies the colour and the pinch of heat. If you use fresh chilies instead, expect a different dish.
- Mustard is structuralMustard -- Dry mustard, and a small amount is enough; the recipe leaves the quantity to the cook. Beyond flavour, mustard powder is often credited with helping a cheese sauce hold together. Add it with the salt and paprika rather than at the end.
- If it separatesA splash of milk, beer or evaporated milk stirred in off the heat will usually bring a broken cheese mixture back. The original assumes a cook watching the pan closely enough that it never gets there.
- Serve immediatelyMelted cheese with no starch or egg to stabilise it sets hard as it cools and will not reheat well. Have the toast cut and dry before the cheese goes in the pan.
Meatless cookbooks of the period leaned hard on cheese, and this is essentially a small Welsh rarebit with green pepper folded in. The genre is generally traced to two overlapping movements: vegetarian reform and the ordinary domestic-science drive to find cheap protein for days when meat was dear or when religious observance forbade it — dishes of this kind were meant to occupy the centre of a plate, not the edge. Cheese-on-toast preparations like this are often said to have been chafing-dish food, cooked at the table over a spirit lamp for late suppers, which would explain the tiny quantities and the assumption of constant attention. Green sweet peppers are thought to have been a comparatively new commercial crop in the American North at the time, and cookbooks of the period use them freely as a bright, cheap way to make a plain cheese mixture look like a composed dish.