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Nut and Fruit Cheese
1/4 pound figs 1/4 pound seeded raisins 1/4 pound dates 1/4 pound pecans 2 ounces almonds 2 ounces pine nuts 2 ounces Brazil nuts Wash the fruit and stone the dates. Mix thoroughly with the nuts and put through a meat chopper. Press the mixture into baking powder tins and stand in a cool place. When wanted for use loosen the sides with a thin knife-blade and turn out on a board. Cut into thin slices and serve in the place of meat or put between thin slices of buttered bread.
A pressed fruit-and-nut loaf rather than anything dairy, meant to be sliced cold. The recipe is straightforward; most of what needs translating is the equipment and the word "cheese" itself.
- No cheese involved"Cheese" here is used in the old sense of a solid mass pressed into a mould and sliced, as in damson cheese. Nothing is cultured, ripened or dairy.
- The meat chopperA hand-cranked grinder with a coarse plate. A food processor does the same job, but pulse it — run continuously and the dates and figs turn to a sticky paste that will not slice cleanly. A meat grinder attachment on a stand mixer is the closest match.
- Baking powder tinsStraight-sided tin cylinders, which gave neat round slices. A clean 15-oz can with both ends removable, a small loaf tin lined with plastic wrap, or a tight roll of parchment all work; the point is firm packing with no air pockets.
- Pack hardThis is the hinge. The mixture holds together by pressure alone — there is no binder, no egg, no cooking. Press it down in layers with the back of a spoon or a tamper until it is dense, or the slices will crumble.
- Preparing the fruitDried figs need their hard stem tips cut off. "Seeded raisins" means raisins with the seeds removed — ordinary seedless raisins are what to buy now. Rinse and pat the fruit dry; wet fruit makes a slack mixture.
- The nutsAlmonds are best blanched and skinned for texture, though the recipe does not say so. Pine nuts and Brazil nuts are both high in oil and go rancid quickly, so buy them fresh and taste before grinding.
- "A cool place" means the refrigerator"A cool place" -- in this period that meant a larder, cellar or icebox; use the refrigerator now. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight, so the mass firms enough to cut thin. Wrapped tightly it should keep a week or two refrigerated.
- YieldThe fruit and nuts as listed come to about 1 pound 6 ounces before any loss, enough for a fair number of thin slices or sandwiches.
- The stray line"1/2 cup lentils 12" at the end appears to be the start of the next recipe, caught by the page break. Ignore it.
Mrs. Fryer's Loose Leaf Cook Book belongs to the run of American household manuals published around the First World War, when meatless days were both patriotic and economical, and when the vegetarian cookery promoted by the Battle Creek sanitarium had put nut loaves, nut butters and "nut meats" into ordinary kitchens. The dish itself is older in form than in purpose: pressing a fruit pulp into a mould and slicing it cold is the same method behind damson cheese and quince paste, both long established in English cookery, and the name survived even after the fruit paste acquired a load of nuts and a job standing in for cold cuts. The mixture of figs, dates and raisins with pecans, pine nuts and Brazil nuts draws on imported dried fruit and shelled nuts.