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Golden Buck
Beat one egg and put into a small saucepan; add five ounces of soft, domestic cheese in small pieces or bits, one even tablespoon of butter; one-third teaspoon of salt; a grain of cayenne; one even teaspoon of mustard; and five tablespoons of milk. Toast and keep warm five slices of bread. Set the saucepan of cheese mixture into another of boiling water and stir until the cheese is almost creamy. Set the pan where it will keep hot but not cook any more. Make ready ten poached or "dropped" eggs; spread the mixture on the toast, and also place over the cheese on each slice two of the cooked eggs. Serve immediately.
A Welsh rabbit built over a double boiler and crowned with poached eggs. The hinge is heat: the cheese must never see direct flame or it will break into strings and oil.
- The double boiler is not optional"Set the saucepan of cheese mixture into another of boiling water" is the whole technique. Cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat above roughly 160F, so keep the water simmering rather than at a hard boil and stir constantly until the mass is glossy and just pourable.
- "Soft, domestic cheese"Most likely a young, mild American cheese rather than an imported aged type. Five ounces of a mild yellow Cheddar or a Colby, coarsely grated rather than cut in bits, melts far more evenly.
- MustardAn even teaspoon of mustard here is dry mustard powder, not prepared jarred mustard. If you substitute prepared mustard, use about a teaspoon and a half and expect a sharper, more vinegary result.
- A grain of cayenne"a grain" is a pinch. Start with about 1/16 teaspoon.
- YieldFive slices of toast, each with two poached eggs, serves five as a lunch or supper dish. The cheese mixture is thin by design.
- Poach the eggs lastTen poached eggs held while the cheese finishes will go cold and firm. Have the cheese made and parked over its hot water, then poach in two batches of five in barely simmering salted water, three minutes for a set white and liquid yolk.
- Toast timingBread toasted and "kept warm" for any length of time turns leathery. Toast it while the eggs poach and assemble immediately, or the sauce soaks straight through.
- If it separatesA broken cheese mixture can often be pulled back by taking it off the heat and beating in a tablespoon of cold milk. Adding more heat will not fix it.
A "buck" is the American extension of Welsh rabbit, the eighteenth-century tavern dish of melted cheese on toast whose name is often said to have been a joke at the expense of cooks with no meat to serve, though that explanation is folk tradition rather than documented fact. Add a poached egg and it becomes a golden buck; leave the egg off and it is a plain rabbit, and so many turn-of-the-century books print the two side by side. The dish belongs to the chafing-dish craze of the 1890s and 1900s, when middle-class households made late suppers at the table over a spirit lamp, and cheese, eggs and bread were the natural repertoire. Cheese was treated as a supper protein rather than a savoury course, with mustard and cayenne to give it bite.