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Cheese Custard
(MRS. DIMON.) BUTTER a baking-dish, put in a layer of bread cut in pieces one inch square with crust removed, sprinkle thin-sliced cheese over the bread, dust with salt and paprica, or a few grains of cayenne.
Add other layers of bread and cheese, seasoning as before, using in all half a small loaf of bread, one cup of cheese and half a teaspoonful of salt.
Beat two eggs slightly, add one pint of milk, and pour the mixture over the bread and cheese. Bake about half an hour in a moderate oven.
Cheese Soufflé.
Cook together four tablespoonfuls of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, into which have been sifted one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of soda and mustard and a few grains of cayenne. Add gradually half a cup of milk. When the sauce boils, remove from the fire and stir into it one cup of grated cheese (half a pound) and the yolks of three eggs, beaten until light. When well mixed, fold in the stiffly beaten whites of three eggs.
Bake in a buttered pudding-dish, in a moderate oven, about twenty-five minutes, or in individual dishes, paper cases, or china shirring-cups, about twelve minutes. Serve at once from the dish or dishes. The soufflé will "stand up" a little better, if three-fourths a cup of milk be used in place of the half-cup as given, and half a cup of stale grated bread be added before the cheese; but it will not be quite so delicate.
Two related dishes run together on one page: a bread-and-cheese custard that is essentially an early strata, and a cheese souffle built on a thick roux. Both are straightforward, but the measurements need translating and the oven needs a number.
- Moderate ovenNo temperature is given in the book; take it as somewhere around 350F (period usage spans roughly 325-375F). The custard's half-hour and the souffle's twenty-five minutes suit that range, and a much hotter oven risks the custard's edges setting hard or curdling before the centre sets.
- The cheese measure is inconsistentFor the souffle the book equates one cup grated with half a pound, which is roughly double what a cup of grated cheese weighs today. Go by weight: about 4 oz for the custard, and for the souffle either 4 oz for a lighter result or the full 8 oz if you want it assertively cheesy, in which case add the extra milk the last sentence suggests.
- What cheeseA plain firm cheddar or a dry American factory cheese is the likeliest reading, though the recipe simply says "cheese." Anything very young or very wet will loosen the souffle base; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch and gives a slightly grainy custard.
- Let the custard standThe recipe pours and bakes immediately. Twenty to thirty minutes' soak before it goes in gives an even set rather than dry cubes floating on set milk. Half a small loaf is roughly 6-8 oz of bread; a pint of milk with two eggs is a loose custard, so use a dish that holds it about two inches deep.
- Doneness for the custardIt is done when a knife an inch off centre comes out clean and the middle still trembles. Carryover finishes it. Baked until firm throughout, the egg weeps.
- The souffle roux is deliberately thickFour tablespoons butter to two of flour with only half a cup of milk gives a very stiff panade, which is what carries the whipped whites. Beat the yolks in off the heat, as written, or they scramble.
- Soda and mustardThe quarter-teaspoon of soda is there to keep the cheese sauce smooth and slightly lighten it; it is optional by modern practice and can taste soapy if over-measured. The dry mustard is not optional in flavour terms.
- Shirring-cups and paper casesSmall individual ramekins, buttered. Twelve minutes at 350F is about right for 4 oz cups. Serve immediately in either case; a cheese souffle falls within two or three minutes.
- YieldThe custard serves four as a light supper dish. The souffle serves three to four, or four to six individual cups.
This page appears to come from Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing Dish Dainties, a turn-of-the-century collection aimed at the chafing-dish and light-supper end of American cooking, where cheese did much of the work that meat did at dinner. The custard is a direct ancestor of what American cooks now call strata: buttered dish, layered bread and cheese, savoury custard poured over, baked slow. The form is old and thrifty, a savoury cousin of bread pudding, and it turns up in English cookery as cheese pudding, though the relationship between the two is not a documented sequence. Attributing it to Mrs. Dimon is typical of the period's community-cookbook habit. The souffle beside it shows the other pole of the same book, French technique filtered through the Boston Cooking School, down to the closing note that you can trade delicacy for stability by adding stale breadcrumbs, which is exactly the sort of practical honesty that made these manuals useful.