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Cheese Custard (Butter slices of bread and cut)
Butter slices of bread and cut into dice. Put into the buttered baker, a layer of the bread, then a layer of tasty cheese. If it can be well dried and put through the grinder, I like it better. When this is not convenient, cut it up as thin as possible. Do this until the baker is full. Over this pour an unsweetened custard, made of one pint of milk, one egg, seasoned with salt and pepper. I like to spread a thin layer of buttered crumbs over the top. Bake until custard is firm.
— Mrs. Chas. R. Ayres
A bread-and-cheese strata under a savory custard, from an era when a pint of milk and one egg was considered enough binder. A few adjustments make it set properly rather than weep.
- The bakerA "baker" is simply an earthenware or granite-ware baking dish. The original gives no size; a 1½–2 quart casserole is a reasonable modern stand-in. Butter it well; the cheese will stick otherwise.
- Custard ratioOne egg to a pint of milk is a very lean custard and will be loose and watery in a modern oven. Three to four eggs per pint (2 cups) is the standard proportion for a savory custard that slices.
- "Tasty cheese"Period shorthand for a sharp, well-aged cheese — an aged Cheddar or a dry American store cheese. Mild cheese disappears entirely under the custard. Figure 6–8 oz for a dish this size.
- Through the grinderDrying the cheese and running it through a food grinder gave a fine, evenly melting shred, which the author says she prefers. The large holes of a box grater, or a food processor, does the same job.
- BreadDay-old or stale bread, buttered on one side and cut into roughly ½-inch dice, holds its shape. Fresh soft bread collapses into paste under the custard.
- OvenThe original gives none. Bake at 325–350°F; hotter and the egg curdles and separates before the center sets. Allow 40–50 minutes, or until a knife inserted at the center comes out clean and the custard reads about 170°F.
- Resting and soakingLet the assembled dish stand 20–30 minutes before baking so the bread absorbs the custard, and rest it 10 minutes out of the oven before serving.
- YieldServes four as a light supper or luncheon dish, two as a main course with a salad.
Dishes of this kind — buttered bread layered with cheese and bound with an egg custard — were standard economy cookery in American and British households well before the word "strata" attached itself to them in the twentieth century. They belong to the same family as Welsh rarebit and cheese pudding: a way of turning stale bread and the dry end of a cheese into a hot dish substantial enough to anchor a meal. A cheese dish of this sort could serve as a meat substitute, for a week when the household budget did not run to a roast. The Philathea classes were the young women's counterpart to the Baraca Bible classes in early twentieth-century Protestant churches, and their fundraising cookbooks collected exactly this sort of contribution — signed, unfussy, and written for a cook who already knew what a baker was and how long her own oven took.