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Ditty
Dash of paprika. Salt. 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups grated cheese 1 cup tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon soda Worcestershire sauce 1 egg Melt the cheese in the butter; add the tomatoes, soda and seasoning, then the egg, well beaten. Serve on toast or crackers.
A tomato rarebit in the Welsh-rabbit family, thickened with egg and served over toast. Everything depends on keeping the heat low enough that the cheese stays smooth.
- The hinge: never let it boilMelted cheese held above a bare simmer separates into grease and rubbery curd, and the beaten egg will scramble outright. Use a double boiler or the lowest possible burner, and pull the pan off the heat before the egg goes in.
- Why the soda is thereThe 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda neutralizes the acid in the tomatoes so the cheese does not curdle on contact. It will foam up when it hits the tomatoes; add it to the tomatoes and let the fizzing subside before combining with the cheese, or the mixture will climb the pan.
- The cheeseTwo cups grated is about 8 oz. A sharp, well-aged cheddar melts and tastes the way this recipe intends; pre-shredded cheese is coated with anti-caking starch and goes grainy. Grate it yourself.
- "1 cup tomatoes"In a book of this period this most likely means canned tomatoes, drained of their loosest liquid and broken up, or stewed fresh ones. Crushed canned tomatoes work; whole peeled tomatoes chopped and drained are closer to the original texture.
- "Seasoning" and the WorcestershireNo quantity is given for either. Reckon on a teaspoon of Worcestershire, a half teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, tasting before the egg goes in. Dry mustard and cayenne are standard in rarebits of this era and both suit it.
- Adding the eggBeat the egg, stir a few spoonfuls of the hot cheese mixture into it to temper, then return the lot to the pan off the heat and stir until it thickens. Dropping a cold beaten egg straight into hot cheese is how these dishes end up speckled.
- The fireless-cooker contextIf the dish was finished in a fireless cooker, the pan would have been heated on the stove and then set into the insulated box to finish. A modern double boiler over barely simmering water gives the same slow, indirect heat.
- YieldRoughly enough for four servings on toast, or six as a cracker spread. It is best eaten straight from the pan; reheated rarebit almost always breaks.
This belongs to the large American family of cheese-and-tomato rarebits that spread through community and school cookbooks in the first decades of the twentieth century, appearing under names like tomato rarebit, blushing bunny and various local coinages of which Ditty appears to be one. The parent dish is Welsh rabbit, melted cheese poured over toast, which English cookery books record from the eighteenth century; the American versions added tomato, egg and Worcestershire, and the soda is the practical fix for what happens when acid meets casein. Its placement in a fireless cookery chapter is the period detail worth noticing: the fireless cooker, an insulated box in which preheated stones or a hot pot finished the cooking without fuel, was promoted heavily to households around 1900 to 1920 as an economy measure, and gentle, scorch-prone dishes like this one were exactly what it did well.