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Welsh Rarebit
1/4 tablespoonful butter + cup cream cup cheese, broken in small pieces teaspoonful lemonjuice teaspoonful Worcestershire sauce 1 egg, slightly beaten with 1 tablespoonful of water teaspoonful mustard 1 teaspoonful celery salt Toasted bread or crisp crackers Dash of cayenne Melt butter in double boiler, add cheese and cream, and while this is melting stir in mustard, celery salt, and cayenne previously mixed together.
When the cheese mixture has begun to thicken and look creamy, carefully stir in the egg. Just before taking up add lemon-juice and Worcestershire. Serve at once on toast or crackers. Avoid overcooking, or the cheese will become stringy.
A double-boiler rarebit thickened with egg rather than beer, which makes it gentler than the tavern version but less forgiving of heat. Everything hinges on keeping the cheese below a simmer.
- The hinge: never let it boilCheese sauce breaks and turns stringy the moment the proteins tighten, which is why the recipe calls for a double boiler and warns against overcooking. Keep the water beneath at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil, and pull the pan off the heat while the sauce still flows.
- QuantitiesSeveral of the measurements have lost their fractions in this printing. Worked as a standard rarebit of this type, a tablespoon of butter carries roughly a cup of cheese and a quarter cup of cream, with the mustard, lemon juice and Worcestershire at something like a quarter to half teaspoon each; celery salt survives in the text as a full teaspoonful. Treat all of it as a starting point and season at the end.
- Which cheese"Cheese, broken in small pieces" is unspecified; a firm store cheddar is the likeliest reading. A well-aged cheddar carries more flavour but breaks more readily; a medium cheddar, coarsely grated rather than broken, melts smoothest. Avoid pre-shredded cheese, as the anti-caking starch dulls the texture.
- Tempering the eggThe egg is beaten with a tablespoon of water so it disperses instead of setting in threads. Add a spoonful of the hot cheese to the egg first, stir, then return the lot to the pan off the direct heat.
- Dry seasonings mixed firstMustard here is dry mustard powder, and mixing it with the celery salt and cayenne before it goes in stops the powder clumping into bitter pockets.
- Acid lastLemon juice and Worcestershire go in at the very end for good reason: added early, the acid encourages the cheese to curdle and squeeze out fat.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; on these quantities it will cover roughly two generous slices of toast, or stretch further as a savoury course. It sets stiff as it cools and does not reheat well, so make it immediately before serving.
- The toastDry the slices well in the toaster or a low oven so they hold up under the sauce rather than going limp.
Welsh rarebit is simply melted cheese on toast raised to the status of a dish, recorded in English cookery from the early eighteenth century as "Welsh rabbit" -- generally understood as a joke at the expense of people said to be too poor for game, with "rarebit" appearing later as a genteel correction of what was assumed to be an error. The tavern version is loosened with ale or beer; this one uses cream and a beaten egg instead, a turn that yields something closer to a cheese custard. Rarebit was a staple of the light evening meal and the chafing-dish supper alike.