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Welsh Rarebit
INGREDIENTS.
1 tablespoonful of butter. ½ a pound of cheese, cut fine ¼ a teaspoonful of salt.
A dash of paprica. or grated. 1/2 a cup of cream.
The beaten yolks of 2 eggs.
Method. - Melt the butter, add the cheese and seasonings, and stir until melted; then add the eggs, diluted with the cream, and stir until smooth and slightly thickened. Do not allow the mixture to boil at any time in the cooking; if necessary, cook over hot water. Serve on thin crackers, hot shredded-wheat or granose biscuit, or on bread toasted on but one side, placing the rarebit on the untoasted side.
A beerless rarebit thickened with egg yolks and cream — closer to a cheese custard than the ale-based versions, and much easier to hold together if you keep the heat low.
- The hinge: never let it boilEgg yolk plus melted cheese will break into curds and oil the moment it simmers. Rather than waiting to see whether it is "necessary," set the pan over hot water from the start; the sauce is done at the point it coats a spoon.
- The cheeseHalf a pound is about 8 oz, roughly 2 cups grated. Cheddar is the usual choice; a very sharp, long-aged piece brings flavour but is more prone to going grainy, so keep the heat low. Pre-shredded cheese is dusted with starch or cellulose and will thicken the mixture grittily. Grate it yourself and let it come to room temperature.
- CreamPeriod cream was not standardised by fat content and varied a good deal; modern light cream or half-and-half is a reasonable stand-in. Heavy cream works and makes a richer sauce; skim milk will thin the emulsion and encourage separation.
- Salt and paprikaThe salt quantity in the original reads as a quarter teaspoon. Taste before adding it — aged Cheddar carries a good deal of salt on its own. Paprika here is for colour and mild warmth, not heat.
- Granose biscuitA flat wheat-flake cracker made by the Battle Creek sanitarium companies and long discontinued. Any crisp unsweetened cracker or a plain wheat crispbread stands in; shredded wheat, warmed dry in a low oven, is a fair literal substitute.
- Toast on one side onlyThe recipe does not say why, though the usual explanation is that the untoasted face takes up the sauce while the toasted underside keeps the slice from collapsing. Broil one side, flip, and spoon the rarebit onto the pale side.
- YieldServes three to four as a light supper or six as a savoury on small crackers. It does not reheat well; make what will be eaten.
Welsh rarebit — recorded as "Welsh rabbit" from the early eighteenth century, with "rarebit" a later genteel correction — is often said to have begun as a joke at the expense of the Welsh, the meatless cheese-on-toast standing in for the rabbit a poor household could not get, though that account is folk etymology rather than documented history. By the 1890s it had become the signature dish of the American chafing dish, the tabletop pan that let hostesses and college students cook in the parlour after the theatre or the evening's cards. Chafing-dish rarebits of the period were sometimes loosened with ale or beer; this one uses cream and egg yolks, a temperance-minded variation entirely at home in a book that also recommends granose biscuit, a product of the Seventh-day Adventist food works at Battle Creek.