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Walloon Entree
Make some toasted bread, either cut in rounds or in squares, and butter them. Cut some slices of salt beef, or, better still, ham, and put them on top; spread the meat with a good layer of grated cheese, and over that place another piece of buttered toast of corresponding shape. Melt some butter in a small saucepan and fry the rounds till they are golden-brown.
A fried ham-and-cheese sandwich by another name, and it works best if you treat it as one. The original assumes a small pan of butter and a cook watching it closely.
- QuantitiesNo amounts are given at all. For four sandwiches, figure eight slices of bread, about 4 oz of ham, 3-4 oz of grated cheese and 3-4 tablespoons of butter for frying.
- Salt beefThis means brined and boiled beef, closest today to corned beef or a good deli-sliced brisket, not fresh beef and not cured raw beef. The book itself prefers ham, and so should you.
- The cheeseAn assertive melting cheese suits it: Gruyere, aged Gouda, or a Belgian abbey-style cheese. The recipe specifies grated rather than sliced, which in practice melts fast enough to bind the layers before the outside burns.
- Toast first, then fryThe double cooking looks redundant but is the point. The toast dries the crumb so it does not soak up the frying butter, and the sandwich comes out crisp rather than greasy.
- Heat controlButter alone over high heat will brown and then burn before the cheese melts. Keep the pan at medium, allow two to three minutes a side, and add fresh butter for the second batch rather than reusing the darkened fat.
- Keeping them togetherPress the assembled sandwich firmly and turn it with a spatula, not tongs. Cutting the bread in small rounds or squares, as directed, makes it far easier to flip without the layers sliding.
- ServingTwo or three of the small rounds per person as a first course, served immediately; they lose their crispness within a few minutes of leaving the pan.
The name simply places the dish in Wallonia, the French-speaking southern half of Belgium, and the recipe belongs to a wide European family of fried bread-and-cheese savouries that includes the French croque-monsieur and the Italian mozzarella in carrozza. The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in Britain during the First World War from recipes collected from Belgian refugees, and its contents lean heavily toward exactly this kind of cooking: bread, a little cured meat, cheese, butter, and nothing that demands a large kitchen or a long list of ingredients. The vagueness about quantities is characteristic of the period's cookery writing generally.