Russian Toast
1 cup cottage cheese 1/2 cup cream dressing 2 slices bread Trim the crusts from the bread, and cut into two oblong pieces. Toast to a nice brown, and moisten slightly with hot water. Mix the cottage cheese with the cream dressing, and serve a spoonful upon each slice of toast. This makes a nice relish, having much the same flavor as caviar.
A two-ingredient relish from the era when "toast" was a whole chapter of the cookbook rather than a step in one. The only real decisions are what the cream dressing is and whether to dampen the toast.
- Cream dressingIn books of this period this usually means a dressing rather than whipped cream or modern bottled mayonnaise: often a cooked or "boiled" dressing (egg yolk, flour or cornstarch, vinegar, sugar, seasoning, thinned with cream), though some period versions are simply cream soured with vinegar and sugar. A thick homemade mayonnaise loosened with a spoonful of cream is the nearest quick substitute; the sharpness matters, since it is what carries the bland curd.
- Cottage cheeseThe period product was generally drier and more sour than most tubs sold today, closer to a dry-curd or farmer cheese. If using standard small-curd cottage cheese, drain it in a sieve for twenty minutes or the topping will slide off the toast.
- Moistening with hot waterA deliberate technique, not a mistake: a quick pass under hot water softens the toast to a texture between crouton and bread pudding, as in milk toast. It also guarantees sogginess if overdone. Flick a few drops on and let them soak in, or skip the step entirely for a crisp base.
- The breadTwo slices trimmed and halved gives four oblongs — a fingerfood portion; the recipe calls it a relish rather than a meal. Serves two as an appetiser.
- ProportionsOne cup of cheese to half a cup of dressing is far more than four small toasts will hold. Mix a quarter of that amount unless you are feeding a table, and keep the rest for salad.
- The caviar claimThat comparison rests on salt and tang, and beyond whatever the dressing brings the recipe adds none of its own. Season the mixture assertively — salt, a little white pepper, a squeeze of lemon, and chopped chives or grated onion if you like — before deciding the dish is dull.
Toast occupies its own section in a great many American cookbooks of the early twentieth century, when a slice of bread crisped over heat was the standard vehicle for anything soft: creamed vegetables, poached eggs, gravy, cheese. Books of meatless cookery leaned on it especially hard, since toast turned a spoonful of curd or sauce into something that read as a course. The Russian label looks decorative rather than geographic — it may well attach here to the caviar comparison, and "Russian" in period American menus is often said to have signalled sour cream, beets, or the luxury of the tsarist table rather than any specific dish. Cottage cheese itself was ubiquitous and cheap, the by-product of every household that skimmed cream, and vegetarian and economy cookery of the period promoted it hard as a protein that could stand in for meat at a fraction of the cost.