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Cheese Fondu, or Melted Cheese

For Welch rare-bits, canapes au fromage, etc.

See preceding receipt for creamed cheese, and substitute ale for the milk. Either of the ways answers for all the purposes of the other. For canapes, spread the mixture on toast, and put in the oven three minutes before serving.

The preceding form of melted cheese is also one form of the fondue, which does not come under the present category. It may be noted in passing, however, that the fondue of which Savarin thought so much, was more like a dish of scrambled eggs with cheese, having no ale or other liquid added. He says it is of Swiss origin, and that the cayenne is not to be forgotten, that being a characteristic of the dish. He made his fondues, when entertaining a few friends, in a chafing dish over a spirit lamp. His rule would be singularly inappropriate in an hotel entertaining five hundred people. He says allow one egg for each guest, one-third as much cheese and half that of butter, etc. But it illustrates the idea underlying small bills of fare, that every person will partake of the one dish, if that one dish be made of surpassing excellence. The reader perceives that as cream fillings a variety of dissimilar compounds here come together. They are alike, however, in being each one adapted for several uses, for spreading on toast, cakes, filling tarts, tartlets, pies, etc., besides filling cream puffs. In another point they are all alike, and one being learned the rest become the easier for it. They all have to be stirred over the fire till thickened--that one touch of cookery makes the whole lot kin.

A BOOK OF PUFFS, ECLAIRS AND CREAM FILLINGS.--Concluded. If a list had to be made of the articles of pastry held highest in popular esteem, cream puffs would be found somewhere near the beginning. The popular name, Boston cream puffs, might lead to the supposition that they are of American origin, but, far from it, there is so little in our trade that is new that I have a private opinion that Pharaoh's baker, the one who befriended Joseph, knew how to make them just as well as we do. There are many finer and more delicate articles that meet with less appreciation, and when we find a thing so prone to disappear, not only from the baker's windows, but from well-set supper, lunch and dinner tables, too, as cream puffs are, it is the part of good policy to see how we can make the best of them. There is more wit and humor in these puffs than in anything else we make. If it were not for this they would be in still greater request than they are. Wit is defined as something which startles by its unexpectedness. Wit often runs to practical jokes. When a person eating in haste, as the majority do, takes a bite of a puff that is filled with a cream insufficiently cooked and consequently in a fluid state, and the said cream is unexpectedly propelled this way and that way over his apparel, the wit of it may be apparent to all, but is sure not to be relished by the victim. This sort of with should be discouraged, to which end the various cautions about the proper preparations of the pastry creams have already been given. Humor is not so objectionable, and when pure most people enjoy it. It is defined as a faculty of kindly pleasantry. The humor of cream puffs is seldom unmixed.

There is humor, but not of a kindly sort, in giving a plate of empty puffs to a hungry beggar and watching the falling of his countenance when he discovers their emptiness; and there is humor in setting a plate of the same before the hotel boarders who habitually pick and peel the crust off everything before them--off the bread and rolls and corn bread--the tops of the pies--the brown outside from all the meats--but this is humor of the kindly sort, as it makes such people happy to have something that they may peel, and be welcome, and leave no waste behind.