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Welsh Rabbit
Although long a chafing dish parlor pet the Welsh Rabbit is just as much at home in the open as a cotton-tail. Silly society folks tried to get the dictionary-makers to change rabbit to rarebit, but nothing doing, the lexicographers know their cheese.
Splash only enough beer into your skillet to cover the bottom, add a pound of ancient and honorable mouse cheese, chopped up, and butter the size of a butternut; stir until its melting makes your mouth water and when it's all as nice and velvety as the girl friend's cheek stir in a beaten egg, a spoon of Worcestershire, the spoon size depending on how you like it, a pinch of English dry mustard, not one speck of salt but plenty of black pepper freshly pounded in a cloth or ground in a hand mill, and most certainly a dash of Tabasco or cayenne.
Then hold your breath and stir without stopping for 3 minutes before you hollar "Come and get it' and begin ladling it out on hot toast or toasted crackers. You drink beer, ale, or half and half with it as a matter of course.
A campfire version of the chafing-dish standard, written in the slangy voice of the 1930s outdoor books. The vocabulary is dated but the method is sound, and the whole thing lives or dies on heat control.
- Gentle heat is the hingeMelted cheese breaks into stringy curds and oil if it gets much above a bare simmer. Over a fire, set the skillet at the edge of the coals or on a raised grate rather than in the flame, and pull it off entirely if it begins to bubble hard.
- "Ancient and honorable mouse cheese"Best read as a sharp, well-aged cheddar, the sort of strong cheese popularly associated with mousetraps. A good aged farmhouse cheddar is right; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch and melts poorly.
- Butter the size of a butternutA butternut is a white walnut, roughly walnut-sized, so somewhere around 1 to 2 tablespoons. Old cookbooks often measured butter by nut and egg sizes well into the era of kitchen scales.
- How much beerThe recipe does not give a skillet size; enough to cover the bottom of a 10-inch pan is on the order of 1/3 cup. A plain ale or lager works; a heavily hopped beer can taste bitter as it reduces against the cheese.
- The eggBeat it first and stir it in hard so it does not scramble in threads; some cooks pull the pan off the heat to add it, though the recipe does not say to. The three minutes of constant stirring that follow are what cook and thicken it; the mixture should coat the spoon and pour thickly.
- No salt, and whyAged cheddar, Worcestershire and Tabasco all bring salt of their own. Taste at the end if you must, but the instruction to leave it out is deliberate rather than an oversight.
- Serve it the moment it is doneWelsh rabbit sets and turns grainy on standing, and it does not reheat well. Have the toast or crackers already hot and waiting.
- YieldA pound of cheese serves four to six generously over toast, and makes a supper rather than a side.