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Cheese Straws
2 cups sifted pastry flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1 level teaspoon of salt 1/2 cup butter 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper or paprika 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 3/4 cup dry grated cheese Sift flour once, then measure, add salt, baking powder and red pepper and sift three times, put in mixing bowl, chop in butter, make a hole in center of flour and put in egg without beating, cheese and milk, and mix together, turn out on molding board, roll out½ inch thick and cut four inches long and 14 inch wide. Bake in moderate oven until a light brown.
A baking-powder cheese pastry from a Calumet promotional booklet, mixed like a biscuit dough rather than a rolled puff pastry. It comes together in minutes and wants a light hand.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" here means 350-375F. Bake on an ungreased or parchment-lined sheet for roughly 12-15 minutes, until the edges are light brown and the straws are dry through.
- Don't overwork the doughThis is a biscuit method: cut the butter in until it is the size of small peas, then add the wet ingredients and mix only until the dough holds. Kneading or re-rolling scraps repeatedly makes tough, bready straws instead of short crisp ones.
- The strip dimensionsThe width prints here as "14 inch", almost certainly a garbled 1/4 inch. The recipe itself directs rolling 1/2 inch thick and cutting four inches long; straws of this type are conventionally cut about 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide.
- "Dry grated cheese"Meaning a hard, aged cheese grated fine and left uncovered to dry a little, not a moist young cheese. A well-aged Cheddar, dry Jack or Parmesan works; pre-shredded cheese coated with anti-caking starch will make the dough gummy.
- Red pepper"Red pepper" in American books of this period is cayenne, and 1/4 teaspoon in two cups of flour gives a definite warmth. Paprika, offered as the alternative, contributes colour and almost no heat, so the two are not interchangeable in effect.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose. If you substitute all-purpose, use a scant 2 cups, or replace 2 tablespoons of it with cornstarch to soften the crumb.
- Sift, then measureThe instruction is deliberate and matters for the ratio: flour was measured by volume, and a cup of sifted flour holds appreciably less than a scooped one. By weight, 2 cups sifted pastry flour is roughly 7 ounces (200 g).
- YieldAbout 40 to 50 straws, depending on how narrowly you cut them. They are best the day they are baked; recrisp in a 300F oven for a few minutes if they soften.
Cheese straws reached American cookbooks from the English savoury course, where thin cheese pastry batons were served at the end of dinner with a glass of wine. This version reflects what a baking-powder company wanted to sell: the classic straw is a puff or short pastry with no leavening at all, while here two teaspoons of Calumet, an egg and a half cup of milk turn it into something closer to a cheese biscuit stick. Calumet, founded in Chicago in the 1880s, built its business on double-acting baking powder and on booklets like this one, which put its product into recipes that had never called for it. The cayenne is one option among several here, the recipe allowing red pepper or paprika; heat is often said to sharpen the flavour of aged cheese and to make the straws a better companion to a drink.