Home › Meat Substitutes › Savory Cheese Cakes
Savory Cheese Cakes
2 ounces rice 2 ounces mashed potatoes 1/2 pint of milk 1 tablespoon mixed sweet herbs 3 ounces grated cheese Pepper and salt to taste Cook the rice in the milk for fifteen minutes; then add the cheese and mixed herbs. Let it boil for five minutes longer; then add the mashed potatoes and pepper and salt. Form into flat cakes, and roll into rusk crumbs or white bread crumbs, and fry in boiling oil.
A short, thrifty croquette held together by starch alone — no egg in the mix — which makes the state of the mixture the whole recipe. Get it stiff and cold and it fries cleanly; leave it loose and it will slump in the fat.
- Chill before shapingThis is the hinge. With no egg to bind, the cakes rely on the gelatinized rice starch and dry potato setting firm. Spread the cooked mixture on a plate, refrigerate at least an hour until it can be cut, then shape and crumb.
- Weights into cups2 ounces raw rice is a scant 1/3 cup; 2 ounces mashed potato is about 1/4 cup, and should be stiff, unbuttered mash rather than creamed. 3 ounces grated cheese is roughly 3/4 cup, loosely filled.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup in American measure, 10 fluid ounces if the book is following British practice. Start with a cup and add a splash more if the rice is still chalky — the finished mixture wants to be thick enough to mound on a spoon.
- The rice will need longerFifteen minutes in milk rarely brings rice fully tender, and milk scorches. Use a heavy pan over low heat, stir often, and cook until the grains are soft, closer to 20-25 minutes, before the cheese goes in.
- Mixed sweet herbsPeriod blends of sweet herbs commonly drew on parsley, thyme, marjoram and summer savory, though the mixture varied from book to book. A full tablespoon of dried herbs is aggressive for this quantity; use 1 teaspoon dried or the full tablespoon if chopped fresh.
- Rusk crumbsRusk is twice-baked bread, dried hard and crushed — drier and finer than fresh crumbs, so it fries crisper. Plain dry breadcrumbs are the direct substitute; panko works but reads coarser than intended.
- "Boiling oil"Means hot deep fat, around 375F, not oil at a rolling boil. Fry in a shallow inch of oil, two or three minutes a side, turning once — the mixture is already cooked, so you are only crisping the crust.
- YieldAbout six small flat cakes. Enough for two as a main course with a vegetable, or four as a savory course.
Savory cheesecakes — cakes made of cheese, with no expectation of sweetness — existed alongside the sweet curd tarts that were the more usual sense of the word, and versions on this pattern turn up in British and American cookery well into the twentieth century. Recipes like this one belong to the meat-substitute chapters of vegetarian and economy cookbooks, where household thrift pressed cooks to serve cheese, beans, nuts and eggs in place of beef and pork. The construction is pure kitchen thrift: leftover mash, a handful of rice, the milk it was cooked in, and enough grated cheese to carry the flavor and the protein, all bound with nothing more expensive than starch and shaped into a patty to be crumbed and fried.