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Ring Tum Tiddy-I
14 POUND BACON, CUT FINE 1/2 CUP SLICED ONIONS 2 CUPS TOMATOES 2 CUPS CANNED CORN 14 POUND STORE CHEESE, DICED SALT AND PEPPER Fry bacon and onions together until onions are tender, add tomatoes and corn, bring to boiling point and simmer 5 minutes. Add cheese, and, as soon as cheese melts, serve at once on crackers or on toast.
A camp-stove skillet supper in the rarebit family, thickened by nothing but melted cheese. It comes together in about fifteen minutes and must be served the moment the cheese goes slack.
- Bacon and cheese quantitiesBoth are printed as "14 pound," almost certainly a garbled 1/4 pound, i.e. roughly 4 oz each — about four ordinary slices of bacon and a cup of diced cheese. The proportions are forgiving; more cheese makes it richer but also stringier.
- "Store cheese"Period shorthand for the plain wheel of factory cheddar sold by the wedge at a general store: a firm, medium-sharp yellow cheddar. Any block cheddar works. Avoid pre-shredded, which is dusted with anti-caking starch and melts grainy.
- Do not let it boil after the cheese goes inThis is the hinge. Cheddar breaks and turns oily and rubbery above a simmer. Pull the pan off the heat, stir the cheese through the residual warmth, and serve.
- TomatoesTwo cups means canned tomatoes with their juice, or peeled fresh ones chopped. A 14.5 oz can is close enough. Break them up in the pan so they collapse into sauce.
- Canned cornDrain it; the packing liquid will thin the mixture. A 15 oz can drains to about 1 1/2 cups, a little short of the 2 cups called for. Frozen kernels work and hold their texture better.
- Bacon fatThe recipe never says to pour any off, and the fat is what carries the dish. If your bacon renders a great deal, spoon out the excess before the tomatoes go in or the finished mixture will separate.
- Yield and servingEnough for four over toast, or six as a spooned topping on soda crackers. It does not reheat gracefully — the cheese seizes — so cook only what will be eaten.
The name is generally taken as a playful corruption of Welsh rabbit (or rarebit), the old British dish of melted cheese poured over toast, though the exact derivation is not documented; American cookbooks print it in many spellings: rinktum ditty, rum tum tiddy, ring tum diddy. What separates the American versions from the British is the tomato, and often corn and bacon as well, turning a cheese-on-toast supper into something nearer a skillet stew. It suits outdoor cookery for practical reasons: everything but the cheese comes out of a can, it needs one pan and one burner, and it is finished in the time it takes to toast bread over a fire.