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Cheese Dreams
With a biscuit cutter cut circles from very thin slices of any kind of close-textured bread. Lay very thinly shaved slices of cheese between the bread to form sandwiches. Brown lightly in hot butter in a frying-pan. Serve hot.
A fried cheese sandwich cut into rounds, from the chapter on using up bread. The instructions are complete as written; the only real variables are the bread and the heat.
- Bread choice"Close-textured" rules out airy modern sandwich loaves, which tear when shaved thin and soak up butter. A day-old firm white loaf, pain de mie or a dense wheat bread cuts cleanly and holds its shape in the pan.
- Cutter sizeThe recipe gives no size; biscuit cutters came in a range, and a small round of an inch or two suits the dish. Smaller rounds give a better ratio of crisp surface to filling.
- CheeseShave a firm cheese that melts smoothly — aged Cheddar, Gruyère, Cheshire. Crumbly or very fresh cheeses either refuse to bind or leak out at the edges.
- Seal the edgesThe one thing the recipe omits. Press the two rounds together firmly around the rim before frying, and keep the cheese set back from the edge, or the melt escapes and burns in the butter.
- Heat and butterThe recipe says hot butter, but moderate heat serves better: butter browns fast and the cheese needs a minute or two per side to melt through; too high and the bread is dark before the centre softens. Clarified butter, or butter with a little neutral oil, gives more room for error.
- TrimmingsThe circles leave a good deal of scrap. Dry it for crumbs or cube it for croutons — in the spirit of a left-overs book, none of it should go out.
- YieldDepends entirely on cutter size; a pair of thin slices makes only a couple of small sandwiches, since each takes two rounds. Serve them straight from the pan; they go leathery as they cool.
"Cheese dreams" was a stock name in Anglo-American cookery, best attested in books of the early to mid twentieth century, for small fried or toasted cheese sandwiches. The origin of the name is not documented and is usually explained after the fact by the old belief that cheese eaten late brings on vivid dreams "a piece of folklore, not a fact about digestion. Its appearance in a left-overs book is entirely logical: the dish requires stale-firm bread, a scrap of cheese and a knob of butter, and turns the ends of a loaf into something that could be sent to table without apology. Recipes of this kind sit alongside Welsh rabbit and cheese straws in the era's short list of respectable cheese savouries.