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Yorkshire Rarebit
Add two slices of broiled or fried bacon to each service of golden buck.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already made the book's golden buck, which is a Welsh rarebit (melted cheese thinned with ale or milk, seasoned with mustard and cayenne) served over toast with a poached or shirred egg on top. The bacon is the only addition.
- What golden buck isA rarebit poured over buttered toast and crowned with a soft-cooked egg. Without the egg it is a plain rarebit; the egg is what makes it a buck, and the bacon is what makes it Yorkshire.
- CheesePeriod recipes vary: some call for a firm aged Cheddar, others for the mild American "store cheese" of the day. Grate or dice it rather than slicing, and avoid pre-shredded cheese, which is coated with starch and gives a grainy sauce.
- The hinge: low heatCheese sauces break above roughly 160-170F. Melt over the chafing dish's hot-water pan or the lowest possible burner and stir until it just flows; if it bubbles, the fat separates and the mass turns stringy.
- LiquidThe entry gives no proportions. As a working ratio, a rarebit takes roughly a couple of tablespoons of ale, beer or milk per 4 oz of cheese. Add it warm and a little at a time. Ale gives the traditional flavor; milk is milder and more forgiving.
- Bacon"Broiled or fried" means crisp. Cook it first, drain it, and lay it on at the end so it does not soften in the sauce. Two slices per serving is generous alongside cheese and egg.
- Order of assemblyToast, then rarebit, then egg, then bacon crossed over the top. Have everything ready before the cheese goes in the pan; the sauce will not wait.
- YieldThe original specifies only two slices of bacon per service. As a working guide, figure roughly 4 oz cheese, one egg and one slice of toast per person. Rich enough that a serving is a light supper on its own.
The rarebit family descends from Welsh rabbit, a phrase first recorded in the 1720s and generally traced, though without contemporary evidence, to an English joke name for cheese melted on toast in place of game. By the late nineteenth century the variants had multiplied into a small taxonomy: a rarebit plain, a golden buck with an egg, a Yorkshire rarebit with bacon added, an English monkey with breadcrumbs. Their popularity in books like this one owes much to the chafing dish, which was a fashionable fixture of American parlors and college rooms around 1900 because it let a hostess cook at the table without a kitchen or a servant. Melted cheese suited the equipment perfectly: few ingredients, no oven, and a result that looked like an accomplishment. The Yorkshire attribution is conventional rather than documented, the county's name being attached loosely to dishes involving bacon or hearty additions.