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Toasted Cheese
1142. Lay a slice of cheese on toasted bread buttered on both sides; put it to the fire, and, when the cheese begins to toast, mix some beer, pepper, and salt, and pour over it. The beer should be sufficient to moisten the bread.
A one-slice supper of the sort that filled the back pages of Victorian cookery books. The whole thing turns on the order of operations: the cheese goes under the heat dry, and the beer arrives only once it has begun to soften.
- "Put it to the fire"The dish was set before an open hearth or on a grate near the coals. A grill or broiler on high, with the rack a few inches from the element, is the nearest modern equivalent; watch it rather than trusting a time.
- Add the beer lateIf the beer goes on at the start it soaks the toast and cools the cheese, and you get a sodden slice rather than a browned one. Wait until the surface is glossy and beginning to bubble, then spoon it over and return it to the heat for a minute.
- Which cheeseThe recipe does not say. A firm, sharp English cheese such as Cheshire, Lancashire or a mature Cheddar suits the method; cut it thick enough that it does not run off the bread before it colours.
- Which beerA mild ale or brown ale suits it. Modern heavily hopped pale ales and IPAs turn bitter under heat and will overwhelm the cheese.
- How much beer"sufficient to moisten the bread" is the only guide given: a spoonful or two for a standard slice, enough to dampen the crumb without pooling.
- Buttered on both sidesThe recipe is explicit about this and gives no reason for it; buttering the underside does at least keep the base of the toast from drying out under the heat.
- YieldOne slice per person as a savoury at the end of a meal; two or three with a salad as lunch.
Toasted cheese in one form or another runs through English cookery from at least the seventeenth century, and by the nineteenth it sat alongside the various "Welsh rabbit" preparations under the plainer name used here. Some versions melt and stir the cheese with mustard, butter or ale; this one simply melts it onto bread and moistens it. Dishes of this kind were served in the savoury course of a Victorian dinner, after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, a position they held in Britain longer than elsewhere. It is given three lines and no fuss, in the manner of the short suppers that fill the back pages of such books.