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Cheese Rolls
A large variety of rolls may be made by combining cooked beans, lentils or peas with cheese and adding bread crumbs to make the mixture thick enough to form into a roll. Beans are usually mashed, but peas or lima beans may be combined whole with bread crumbs and grated cheese and enough of the water in which the vegetables have been cooked to insure the right consistency. Chopped spinach, beet greens or lettuce may be used instead of the legumes if desired.
Cottage cheese, cream cheese, American or English dairy cheese may be used. 2 cups boiled rice 1 cup grated cheese 1 tablespoon butter
This is less a recipe than a formula, written for a cook who already knew what a nut-and-cheese roll looked like. The stray ingredient list at the end belongs to a rice version of the same idea and gives you the only fixed proportions on the page.
- What a "roll" means hereNot a bread roll. The text says only to form the mixture into a roll; no pan, baking time or slicing is specified. Presumably it was shaped into a cylinder or pressed into a loaf pan and baked until set and browned, then sliced across like a meatloaf. If you use a pan, line it, or the cheese will weld to it.
- Proportions to start fromThe rice list at the end scales the whole family of variants: roughly two parts cooked starch or mashed legume to one part grated cheese, plus a tablespoon of butter, with bread crumbs added until the mass holds a shape. That gives around 3 cups before the crumbs go in, enough for perhaps four.
- OvenNo oven, temperature or time is given anywhere in the entry, and it does not use the term "moderate oven." If you bake it, something around 350F for 35 to 45 minutes suits a loaf of this density; the surface should be browned and the centre hot through.
- American or English dairy cheeseIn this period both generally meant plain cheddar-type dairy cheese rather than anything processed; "English dairy cheese" is usually taken as the drier, sharper sort, though the distinction was not precise. Use a well-aged cheddar and grate it yourself, since anti-caking starch in pre-shredded cheese dulls the binding.
- Cottage and cream cheese behave differentlyThey carry far more water than cheddar and no real binding strength. If you use either, drain the cottage cheese first, expect to add more crumbs, and add an egg to hold the loaf together.
- The cooking waterAdding bean or pea liquor for consistency is sound, but add it a spoonful at a time at the end. A mixture wet enough to look right raw will slump in the oven; it should be stiff enough to hold a thumbprint.
- Greens versionSpinach, beet greens and lettuce must be cooked and squeezed hard in a towel before chopping. Undrained greens release enough liquid during baking to turn the roll into a pudding.
- SeasoningThe original names none. Salt, pepper, a grating of onion or a little mustard powder do a great deal here, particularly with the bland rice or lima bean versions.
Meatless cookery of this kind belongs to a specific moment in American home economics: the years around the First World War, when meatless and wheatless days were promoted as a conservation measure and cookbooks were expected to show householders how to hit their protein for the day without a joint of beef. The nutritional argument came from the calorimetry work of the 1890s and 1900s, which put legumes, cheese and eggs on the same table as meat and let writers treat them as interchangeable units. Hence the shape of this entry, which is really a substitution grid rather than a dish: any cooked legume or green, any cheese, crumbs to bind, and one baking.