Home › Recipes For The Chafing-Dish › Welsh Rarebit II
Welsh Rarebit II
1 tablespoon butter ½ lb. soft mild cheese, cut in small pieces ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon mustard Few grains cayenne 1/3 to 1/2 cup ale or lager beer 1 egg Put butter in chafing-dish, and when melted, add cheese and seasonings; as cheese melts, add ale gradually, while seasonings; as cheese melts, add ale gradually, while stirring constantly; then egg slightly beaten. Serve same as Welsh Rarebit I.
A beer-and-egg version of the chafing-dish standard, richer and more custard-like than the milk-based first recipe. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat.
- Heat controlKeep the chafing-dish over hot water, not over the direct flame. Cheese held above roughly 160F breaks into oil and rubbery curd, and the egg will scramble; steady low heat and constant stirring hold the emulsion together.
- The salt and mustard measuresThe two "14 teaspoon" quantities are quarter-teaspoons. A quarter teaspoon of dry mustard and a quarter teaspoon of salt suit half a pound of cheese, though salt lightly if the cheese is sharp.
- What "soft mild cheese" meansA young, high-moisture cheese that melts smoothly: mild Cheddar, Lancashire, Colby, or a young Cheshire. Aged or pre-shredded cheese, which carries anti-caking starch, gives a grainy result.
- Ale or lagerA mild English-style ale or a plain lager works; heavily hopped IPAs turn the sauce bitter as it reduces.
- Adding the eggTake the pan off the heat before stirring in the beaten egg, then return it briefly. Added over full heat it sets in threads rather than thickening the sauce.
- Quantity of beerStart with a third of a cup and add more only if the mass is too stiff. Too much liquid at once will not re-emulsify with cheese already melted.
- ServingHalf a pound of cheese serves three to four over toast. Serve immediately; reheated rarebit separates, and the egg makes it less forgiving than the milk version.
Welsh rarebit — known in an earlier century as "Welsh rabbit," a name usually explained as a joke at the expense of people said to have cheese where others had meat, though the explanation is traditional rather than documented — became a fixture of the American chafing-dish craze of the 1890s, when the tabletop pan was equipment for late suppers, college rooms and after-theatre parties rather than the kitchen proper. Fannie Farmer gives two versions; this one, with beer in place of milk or cream and an egg for body, follows the older British line, while the enrichment with egg and the careful stirring reflect the cooking-school insistence on method over improvisation. That the recipe assumes ale on hand in a Boston household in 1896 is itself a small period detail, some two decades before Prohibition made such instructions awkward to print.