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Cheese with Creamed Sprouts
Make a cup of white sauce No. 2 (see page 68), and add one cup of left-over Brussels sprouts to the hot sauce, being careful not to break them.
When well heated add half a cup of grated cheese and remove from the fire as soon as the cheese is melted. Serve on squares of well-buttered toast.
A one-pan supper dish built on two leftovers at once: cooked sprouts and stale bread. The whole thing hangs on keeping the cheese off the heat.
- The hinge: cheese off the fireOnce the cheese goes in, the sauce must not simmer again or the proteins tighten and the fat separates into an oily film. Pull the pan to a cool burner, stir until the cheese has just melted, and serve.
- White sauce No. 2Numbered white sauces in books of this period run from thin to thick; No. 2 is normally the medium version, roughly 2 tablespoons each butter and flour cooked together and whisked into 1 cup of milk. The exact proportions on the book's page 68 are what govern here, so check them if you have the full text.
- Grated cheeseUnspecified in the original; a dry aged Cheddar or a factory-made American cheese would be the likely choice. A sharp Cheddar or a mix of Cheddar and Gruyere works; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch that can make the sauce grainy.
- Handling the sprouts"Careful not to break them" reflects that already-cooked sprouts are fragile. Fold with a spatula rather than stirring.
- Reheating onlyThe sprouts are already cooked. They need two or three minutes in the hot sauce, no more, or they turn olive-drab and start giving off sulphur.
- The toastCut day-old bread into squares and butter it well, as the recipe directs; buttering while the toast is hot helps the butter soak in and slows the sauce soaking through. Plate and serve immediately.
- YieldOne cup of sauce and one cup of sprouts makes two modest suppers or four small first courses. Season at the end; both cheese and leftover sprouts are usually already salted.
Creamed vegetables poured over buttered toast were a common American way of using up small quantities of anything, and this book is built around the idea that households wasted too much. Toast served as the plate, the starch and the thickener at once, and stale bread was a leftover most kitchens produced daily. Brussels sprouts were not yet a common American garden vegetable, which may be part of why the writer troubles to warn against breaking them: whole sprouts looked deliberate, mashed ones looked like scraps. The dish belongs to the same family as creamed chipped beef and Welsh rarebit, in which a cheese or milk sauce turns a slice of bread into a meal.