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Chapter XIII-Cheese Dishes
HEESE is a valuable food and may often be used as a substitute for meat. In the raw state it is somewhat difficult of digestion but this is more or less overcome by cooking.
The various brands of cheese derive their names from the places where they are made. The principal varieties of cheese are the following, Parmesan, Gruyère, Edam, Cheddar, Gorgonzola, Brie, Neufchâtel, Camembert, Stilton, Swiss, to which may be added the plain American and Cream cheese.
WELSH RAREBIT, No. I-For a party of five, one pound of grated cheese is required. American cream cheese is best for this purpose. Put into a saucepan one teaspoon of butter and while melting stir it well to oil the bottom of the dish. Then add the cheese and stir gently into it one tablespoon of ale. The cheese will at once thicken and another tablespoon of ale should be added, stirring all the time. Gradually add more ale until the mixture is smooth and velvety. Stir into it one teaspoon of paprika, or if much seasoning is not liked a little made mustard, salt and white pepper. Place in spoonfuls on hot dry toast and serve on hot plates. The amount of ale required cannot be fixed definitely, as it varies according to the richness of the cheese, but one-half pint is usually sufficient. Should this thin the cheese too much stir rapidly to evaporate the moisture.
WELSH RAREBIT, No. 2-Melt one heaping tablespoon of butter in a saucepan with a saltspoon of dry mustard, a pinch each of salt and red pepper. Stir into this three cups of grated cheese. As it commences to soften, add by the spoonful about one-half cup of boiling milk. Stir vigorously and when the mixture is thick, smooth and of a rich yellow, it is done; three or four minutes are quite long enough after adding the cheese. If the cooking is checked too soon, the cheese becomes tough and stringy, and if cooked too long there is danger of curdling. It should be served
Two versions of the same dish, one thinned with ale and one with milk. Both live or die by heat control, so start there.
- Low heat, and never a boilCheese melted much above about 160F tends to squeeze out its fat and turn rubbery in a pool of grease. Keep the pan over the lowest possible flame, or use a double boiler, and pull it off the moment the mass is smooth.
- "American cream cheese" is not cream cheese"American cream cheese" is probably not cream cheese in the modern sense -- in this period the term most likely meant a mild, full-cream American cheddar. Use a mild yellow cheddar; the soft spreadable cream cheese sold today will not behave as described.
- Grate it, and grate it coarselyOne pound of grated cheese is roughly four cups loosely packed, which matches the three cups in the second version closely enough. Pre-shredded bagged cheese is dusted with starch or cellulose and melts grainy.
- Old measuresA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Half a pint of ale is one cup. "Made mustard" is prepared mustard from a jar, not the dry powder called for in the second version.
- The aleA plain English-style pale ale or brown ale is right. Highly hopped modern IPAs turn bitter as the liquid reduces, and the recipe is already expecting you to boil off excess moisture.
- A splash of insuranceIf the sauce threatens to break, a few drops of lemon juice or a pinch of cornstarch tossed with the grated cheese before it goes in will hold the emulsion together. Neither is in the original, and neither substitutes for keeping the heat down.
- Toast and platesThe instruction to use hot dry toast and hot plates is not decoration. Rarebit stiffens as it cools and soaks straight through soft or buttered bread.
- YieldVersion one is stated for five. Version two gives no yield; its three cups of grated cheese is roughly a quarter less than version one's pound.
Welsh rabbit is the older name, recorded in English from the early eighteenth century and appearing in Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery alongside Scotch and English rabbits; "rarebit" is a later respelling, often said to be an attempt to explain away a joke about Welshmen too poor for meat, though this remains conjecture. By the time the Butterick book appeared, the dish had become the emblem of the American chafing-dish craze, cooked at the table in front of guests at late-evening suppers; the cookbook, aimed at homemakers, gives two competing methods and frets precisely about the three or four minutes after the cheese goes in. The chapter's opening claim that cheese "may often be used as a substitute for meat" reflects the period's new enthusiasm for food chemistry and its interest in cheap protein, a note struck in dozens of household manuals of the era.