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Welsh Rabbit Sandwiches
Put one-fourth of a pound of mild American cheese into a mortar with two ounces of butter and one teaspoonful of mustard, pound well together, and dilute with a small quantity of tarragon vinegar. After spreading the mixture between slices of bread it is ready to serve.
This is a cold potted-cheese spread wearing the name of the hot dish; nothing is melted and nothing is cooked. The whole success of it rests on getting the cheese and butter smooth enough to spread without tearing the bread.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of cheese is 4 oz, coarsely grated for easier pounding; two ounces of butter is half a stick, and it must be properly soft. That is about three-quarters of a cup of spread, enough for six to eight tea sandwiches with the crusts off.
- "Mild American cheese"In 1896 this meant a young, mild factory Cheddar, not the wrapped processed slices the phrase suggests today. A mild yellow Cheddar aged only a few months is the right thing; a sharp aged Cheddar will fight the tarragon vinegar.
- The mortarA food processor does this in under a minute, though it will warm the butter, so chill the finished spread before using it. A bowl and a stiff wooden spoon also work if the butter is at room temperature and the cheese finely grated.
- Which mustardThe original is ambiguous. A teaspoon of dry English mustard powder gives the sharp, dry heat the period favoured; a teaspoon of prepared mustard gives a milder result and adds liquid, so you will need less vinegar.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth seeking out rather than substituting plain white wine vinegar, since the anise note is most of the point. Add it a half teaspoon at a time: the mixture should slacken to a spreading consistency and no further, or it will soak the bread.
- The breadThin-cut white sandwich bread, lightly buttered on the facing sides, keeps the spread from wetting the crumb. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead and keep covered with a damp cloth.
Welsh rabbit — the older and more defensible spelling, with "rarebit" a later genteel correction — is, by the traditional and often-repeated account, a joke at the expense of the Welsh, the idea being that melted cheese on toast was the nearest thing to game meat a poor Welsh household would see; the actual origin of the name is not documented. The name is generally traced to eighteenth-century English usage, and by Oscar Tschirky's day it covered a whole family of cheese dishes, hot and cold alike. This version is really a potted cheese, a preparation recorded in English cookbooks of roughly the same century: cheese pounded with butter and seasoning in a mortar kept far better than cheese alone. Its appearance in the Waldorf book, in a period when afternoon tea and late supper both called for small filled breads, shows the old larder preparation repurposed as hotel sandwich work.