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Tomato Rarebit
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 3/4 cup of milk Salt, mustard, cayenne 1/8 teaspoon soda 1 pound cheese 3/4 cup stewed and strained tomatoes Cook the butter and flour together, add the milk, and as soon as the mixture thickens, add tomatoes and soda. Then add cheese and seasoning. Serve on toasted whole wheat or graham bread.
A tomato-spiked Welsh rabbit, built on a small roux rather than beer. The proportions are generous: a full pound of cheese to about a cup and a half of liquid gives a thick, fondue-like sauce.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerOnce the cheese goes in, hold the pan over low heat or off it entirely and stir until smooth. Boiling cheese sauce squeezes the fat out and leaves stringy curds that no amount of stirring will bring back.
- Why the soda is thereThe 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda neutralises enough of the tomato acid to stop the milk and cheese from breaking. Do not increase it, or the sauce takes on a soapy, faintly metallic flavour.
- Cheese: grate it, and choose a firm oneThe recipe says only 'cheese'; a plain firm cheddar is the usual reading for a dish of this type. Grate or thinly slice it so it melts fast; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch that can make the sauce grainy. Avoid processed slices, which behave differently with acid.
- "Mustard" means dry mustardPowdered mustard is the likely reading here; about 1/2 teaspoon suits the quantities. Cayenne is a pinch, and salt should go in last since a pound of cheddar brings plenty of its own.
- Stewed and strained tomatoesCanned tomato purée or passata is the direct equivalent; 3/4 cup of plain canned crushed tomatoes pressed through a sieve also works. Tomato paste is far too concentrated at this volume.
- Graham breadGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, so any sturdy whole-wheat bread is the right substitute. Toast it well and dry, because a thin slice collapses under this much sauce.
- YieldThe original gives none. As written it sauces six to eight slices of toast, which is a supper for four to six people with a salad alongside. It does not reheat gracefully; the sauce tightens and can separate.
Welsh rabbit -- "rarebit" is generally taken to be a later, genteel respelling of a name that appears to have begun as a joke at the Welshman's expense, his rabbit being melted cheese -- was traditionally cheese and ale on toast. By the early twentieth century many American cookbooks were giving milk and a flour thickening in place of the ale, and tomato versions turn up under names like tomato rabbit and blushing bunny. Cheese was a standard protein stand-in for a meatless meal in this period, promoted during the First World War's meat-conservation campaigns, and a dish of this kind let a household serve something hot, filling and unmistakably a main course without touching the butcher's counter.