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Cheese Fritters
Slice thin half a dozen large tart apples (select apples that cook quickly), and prepare half as many thin slices of cheese. Beat up one or two eggs, and season with salt, mustard and pepper.
Soak the cheese in the egg mixture, then put each slice between two slices of apple, sandwich style; dip in the beaten egg, sauté in hot butter, and serve hot.
A fried apple-and-cheese sandwich, cooked in a skillet or over a chafing dish burner. The recipe assumes more knowledge than it states, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- The hinge: cut the apple thin and evenThe apples have to cook through in the same few minutes the cheese takes to melt, which is why the recipe specifies varieties that cook quickly. Slices about 1/8 inch, cut crosswise into rings and cored, behave best; anything thicker stays raw and crunchy while the outside browns.
- Which applesThe recipe only says tart and quick-cooking, and names no variety. Granny Smith holds its shape too stubbornly here; McIntosh or Cortland break down faster and give the intended softness.
- The cheeseUnspecified. A firm cheddar-type cheese is the likeliest reading for a recipe of this period, but the text leaves it open. Cut it slightly smaller than the apple rings so it does not run straight into the pan, and avoid anything very soft or very aged -- fresh mozzarella waters out, and a long-aged cheddar breaks into oil.
- "Soak the cheese in the egg mixture"Cheese will not absorb egg; this means coat it and let it sit a moment. One or two eggs is enough for six apples' worth of sandwiches only if you are dipping, not drowning — start with two.
- MustardMost likely dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar, though the recipe does not say. About a quarter teaspoon in two beaten eggs, whisked in with the salt and pepper.
- Holding them togetherThe assembled sandwiches slide apart in the pan. Press them firmly, chill for a few minutes if the kitchen is warm, and turn once only, with a wide spatula.
- The panMedium heat, butter foaming but not browning — roughly 2 to 3 minutes per side. Butter over high heat will blacken well before the apple softens; a spoonful of neutral oil with the butter buys some margin.
Pairing tart apple with sharp cheese is far older than the chafing dish and long predates any recipe: cheese and apples were an ordinary rural pairing in Britain and New England alike, and the Yorkshire saying about apple pie without cheese is generally traced to that habit rather than to any particular cook. The dish sits comfortably in the end-of-century vogue for the chafing dish, when a spirit lamp and a blazer pan let hostesses cook at the table without troubling the kitchen -- a fashion that produced whole books of quick cheese, egg and shellfish dishes -- though the recipe itself calls for nothing but a pan of hot butter. What is of its moment here is the treatment: a savoury sandwich egged and sauteed, seasoned with dry mustard, and served hot as a course in its own right. Its placement under "Salads" reflects how loosely that heading was used around 1900, covering more or less any cold-adjacent or light made dish that was neither a roast nor a pudding.