Cheese Loaf
1 tablespoon granulated gelatine. 2 tablespoons cold water. 3 tablespoons boiling water. 3/4 cup cooked dressing. 2 cups grated cheese. 1/2 cup chopped pecans. 1/2 cup stuffed olives. 1 cup whipped cream. Soak gelatine in cold water five minutes. Pour boiling water over gelatine and stir until dissolved. When cool add dressing, cheese, olives, nuts, and fold in whipped cream. Mould in oiled mould. Serve as a salad.
A moulded cheese salad of the sort that filled the salad chapter of American cookbooks in the 1920s. It works, but the gelatine is doing a great deal with very little liquid, and that is where attention is needed.
- The hinge: dissolve the gelatine completelyThree tablespoons of boiling water over a tablespoon of bloomed gelatine is a thin margin. Stir until absolutely no grains or threads remain, warming the cup in a pan of hot water if needed, or the loaf will set unevenly and show rubbery strands.
- Add it at the right moment"When cool" means cool to the touch but still fluid. If the gelatine cools to a jelly it will seize into lumps in the cheese mixture; if it is hot it will deflate the whipped cream when you fold it in.
- Granulated gelatineOne tablespoon is close to one modern envelope, though an envelope (1/4 oz, 7 g) is a little less than a level tablespoon. An envelope is reckoned to set 2 cups of liquid; here the cheese and cream carry much of the structure, so expect a soft, sliceable loaf rather than a bouncy jelly.
- Cooked dressingThis means boiled dressing, the flour-and-egg vinegar dressing of the period, not mayonnaise. Mayonnaise thinned with a spoonful of vinegar or lemon juice is the closest substitute; it will be richer and less sharp.
- Grated cheeseThe recipe says only 'grated cheese'; in 1920 this would most likely have been a firm American or store cheddar. Use a sharp aged cheddar, grated fine on the small holes so it disperses rather than sitting in shreds; two cups grated fine is roughly 6 to 8 oz.
- Olives and nutsStuffed olives means pimiento-stuffed green olives. Slice them and blot them dry along with the pecans, since brine and oil both weaken the set.
- The mouldBrush a loaf pan or mould with a neutral oil, not butter, which firms up cold and sticks. Chill at least four hours, and unmould by dipping the pan briefly in warm water and inverting onto a plate.
- Yield and servingEnough for six to eight as a salad course. Slice cold and serve on lettuce with a little more of the dressing alongside.
Moulded salads like this one belong to the period when powdered gelatine had become cheap and reliable: a cook in 1920 could buy an envelope of granulated gelatine at the grocer and set almost anything in it. Mrs. Wilson, who wrote for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and issued this book in 1920, files it under salads because that is what a chilled moulded dish was then understood to be, whatever it contained. The combination of cheese, pecans and pimiento-stuffed olives bound in boiled dressing is a distinctly American assembly of the era, and the whipped cream folded through at the end is the touch that keeps it from being merely a cold cheese paste, aerating the mixture so it slices pale and light. Boiled dressing itself, thickened with flour and egg rather than emulsified with oil, is often said to have been a household mainstay for salads into the 1920s, cheaper and more stable in a warm kitchen than homemade mayonnaise.