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Welsh Rarebit No. 1
1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon cornstarch 1/2 cup milk 1/2 pound cheese cut into small pieces 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and mustard Speck of cayenne pepper Cook the cornstarch in the butter; add the milk gradually, cook two minutes; add the cheese, and stir until it is well melted. Season and serve on crackers or bread toasted on one side, the rarebit being poured over the untoasted side.
A cornstarch-thickened rarebit, safer against curdling than the beer-and-egg versions. The whole dish turns on gentle heat.
- Keep it below a simmerOnce the cheese goes in, the sauce must never boil. Boiling drives the fat out of the cheese and leaves a stringy mass in an oily puddle. Low heat, constant stirring, and pull the pan the moment the cheese is smooth.
- The cheese to use"Cheese" in an American cookbook of this period generally means a firm aged Cheddar, the sort sold as store or dairy cheese. A sharp Cheddar or a Cheddar-Gruyere mix works; avoid pre-shredded bags, whose anti-caking starch makes the sauce grainy. Half a pound is about 2 cups grated, and grating rather than cutting into pieces speeds the melt.
- Mustard means dry mustardA quarter teaspoon of powdered English or Colman's-style mustard, not prepared mustard from a jar. Bloom it in the milk if you like a smoother finish.
- The roux stepA tablespoon of butter to a teaspoon of cornstarch is a very loose roux; cook it just until it stops smelling raw, perhaps 30 seconds. Add the milk in stages and whisk, or the starch will seize into lumps.
- ConsistencyHalf a cup of milk to half a pound of cheese gives a thick, spoonable rarebit rather than a pourable sauce. Thin with another tablespoon or two of warm milk off the heat if it tightens up.
- Toasted on one sideThe recipe is explicit about this. The untoasted side takes up the sauce while the crisp underside helps keep the bread from collapsing. Use bread with some structure, cut thick.
- YieldEnough for two as a supper dish, or four as a savoury course. It does not hold or reheat well; make it to order.
Welsh rarebit is documented in English cookery from the early eighteenth century as "Welsh rabbit"; the name is usually explained as a joke at the expense of a region thought too poor for game meat, with the cheese standing in for the rabbit, though the origin is not actually documented. "Rarebit" is generally treated as a later genteel respelling of the pun rather than a separate word. Its appearance here under "Meat Substitutes" fits the logic of wartime and Meatless Monday cookery of the First World War years, when cheese, eggs and pulses were promoted as protein sources so that meat could be conserved. The cornstarch works as insurance: earlier rarebits leaned on ale and beaten egg to bind the cheese, both of which curdle readily, while a starch-thickened white sauce base is more forgiving in less practised hands.