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English Monkey
One cup of stale bread crumbs soaked in one cup of milk until soft. Melt one tablespoon of butter in blazer, and one-half cup of mild American cheese cut in dice. When cheese has melted add the softened crumbs, one egg and salt and pepper. Cook three minutes longer and pour the hot mixture over squares of toast.
A chafing-dish supper dish in the Welsh rabbit family, thickened with bread and egg rather than flour. It comes together in minutes, and the only thing that can go wrong is heat.
- The hinge: keep the egg from scramblingBeat the egg before it goes in, and add it with the pan off the direct flame or over the hot-water bath. Cheese and milk at a simmer will curdle a whole egg into visible threads in seconds.
- "Blazer"The upper pan of a chafing dish, used directly over the spirit lamp. On a stove, a small heavy saucepan over low heat does the same job; if you are nervous, set it over a pan of simmering water.
- "Mild American cheese"At this period the phrase generally meant a young, mild factory cheddar rather than the processed slices it now suggests. Roughly 2 oz of mild yellow cheddar or a young Colby will fill the half cup, diced small so it melts before the milk gets hot.
- Stale bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn or grated from day-old bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which will drink the milk and go pasty. Let them soak until no dry centers remain, then break up any lumps with a fork.
- TimingThree minutes is genuinely all it needs once the crumbs are in — long enough to set the egg and no longer. Held over heat, the cheese separates and the mixture turns oily and stringy.
- SeasoningThe original stops at salt and pepper. A little dry mustard, a dash of Worcestershire or cayenne is period-appropriate and keeps the dish from tasting flat.
- YieldServes two as a light supper, or four as a savory course. Toast the bread just before serving and pour over at once; it goes soggy quickly.
"English monkey" is one of a cluster of American joke names for melted-cheese-on-toast — Welsh rabbit, golden buck — where the animal in the title is precisely what the dish does not contain. It belongs to the chafing-dish vogue that ran from the 1890s through the First World War, when a spirit lamp and a nickel-plated pan let students, bachelors and hostesses cook at the table in rooms with no kitchen; the Butterick Cook Book of 1911 gave the fashion its own chapter. What distinguishes this version from a straight rabbit is the bread and egg, which stretch a half cup of cheese into a supper for two and give the mixture enough body to sit on toast instead of running off it — a thrift that also explains the stale crumbs.