Golden Buck
1 cup milk 2 cups grated cheese 1/4 teaspoon mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt Dash of red pepper 6 squares toast 6 poached eggs Let the milk come to the boiling point; add the cheese; then the mustard, pepper and salt. Have the poached eggs ready on a platter and as soon as the cheese is melted pour the mixture around, not over the eggs. Garnish with parsley.
A rarebit sauce with a poached egg, and the whole thing hangs on not letting the cheese boil. Everything else is assembly.
- Keep the heat low once cheese goes inBring the milk just to a simmer, then pull the pan to low heat before adding the cheese. Cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat above roughly 160F, and the sauce turns into strings in a pool of grease.
- There is no thickener hereWith only milk and cheese, the sauce sets by the cheese itself and will be loose. A well-aged cheddar melts into a grainier sauce than a younger one; a moderately sharp cheddar or a mix of cheddar and a good melting cheese behaves best. Grate it rather than cubing so it goes in fast.
- Two cups grated cheeseLoosely packed, that is about 6-8 oz by weight. Weigh it if you can, since grate size changes cup volume by a third or more.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not crushed chile flakes. A dash means a pinch — perhaps 1/16 teaspoon.
- MustardThe quarter-teaspoon measure points to dry mustard powder rather than prepared. If substituting prepared mustard, use about three times as much and add it off the heat.
- Poach and holdPoach the eggs to a set white and liquid yolk, about three minutes, and hold them in warm water until the sauce is ready. Draining them briefly on a towel keeps poaching water from thinning the sauce on the platter.
- Around, not overThe instruction is deliberate. The eggs stay visible and the yolks break into the sauce as they are served rather than being buried under it.
- YieldSix servings, one egg and one square of toast each. As a light supper or lunch dish rather than a course in a larger meal.
A "buck" in American chafing-dish cookery is a Welsh rarebit — melted cheese, mustard and cayenne poured over toast — with an egg added; in period usage the golden buck denotes rarebit with a poached egg. The name is generally traced to the older English "Welsh rabbit," a joke at the expense of a household with no meat, later genteelly respelled as rarebit. Dishes of this kind were the mainstay of the chafing dish, the alcohol-lamp table stove that became fashionable in American homes around the turn of the twentieth century for late suppers and impromptu entertaining.