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Yorkshire Buck
Crumble and melt one-half pound of cheese until of the consistency of cream. Now thoroughly mix: Ale, warmed, one ordinary glass full; tabasco sauce, ten drops; mustard and salt; pour this into the melted cheese slowly, stirring all the time, until the ale is all added. Pour the mixture over toast, adding one poached egg and a few pieces of crisp bacon or ham to each slice.
A buck rabbit in all but name: melted cheese over toast, crowned with a poached egg and bacon. The whole dish hinges on heat control, since a cheese sauce this lean breaks easily.
- Keep it below a simmerHalf a pound of cheese melted alone will separate into oil and rubbery curd if it gets much above 150F. Use a double boiler or the lowest possible flame, stir constantly, and stop as soon as it flows like heavy cream.
- The ale must be warmThe instruction to warm the ale is not decorative. Cold liquid dropped into melted cheese seizes the proteins and gives you strings in a puddle of fat. Add it in a slow stream, off the direct heat.
- "One ordinary glass full"An ambiguous measure; a drinking glass or tumbler of the period might hold anywhere from about 6 to 8 fl oz. Start with 4 fl oz for half a pound of cheese and add more only if the mixture is too stiff to pour.
- Which cheeseThe recipe does not say. A firm, well-aged cheese such as a sharp Cheddar or Cheshire suits it best. Young, high-moisture cheese and anything pre-shredded with anti-caking starch will go grainy.
- Mustard and salt, unmeasuredNo quantity is given. Figure a teaspoon of dry English mustard for half a pound of cheese, and go very light on salt until the end -- aged cheese and bacon both bring plenty.
- Ten drops of tabascoThat is genuinely hot for a two-person portion. Three or four drops is closer to modern palates for a supper dish.
- Toast that will hold upThin sandwich bread collapses under a poured cheese sauce plus a poached egg. Cut sturdy bread thick and toast it dry and dark so the crumb resists.
- YieldHalf a pound of cheese with the ale makes enough for three or four slices -- two generous servings as a supper or savoury course, four as a light lunch. Assemble and eat immediately; the sauce sets fast.
This belongs to the sprawling family of British cheese-and-toast savouries that ran from Welsh rarebit through Scotch woodcock, and the naming was never consistent from one cookbook to the next. A rarebit with an egg added on top was widely called a buck rabbit, and "Yorkshire" here may signal nothing more than the addition of bacon or ham alongside the egg, though the origin of the name is uncertain. Its appearance in an early twentieth-century American cookbook reflects how cookbooks of the period treated melted cheese as the backbone of the light supper and the chafing-dish course, a meatless-but-substantial dish a hostess could produce at the table. The ale is the older element: British recipes had been slackening melted cheese with beer or ale since at least the eighteenth century, well before milk-based rarebits became common.