No. 653

Cheese Crust Garnishing

Garniture de Croutes au Fromage

First cut some slices three-eights of an inch thick from a kitchen loaf; divide them into long squares, two and a half inches by one and a quarter. Grate some Swiss and parmesan cheese, a quarter of a pound of each, and put it into a vessel with three soupspoonfuls of Stilton cheese, and mash them together with a spoon in order to obtain a smooth paste, then work into it slowly a few spoonfuls of sherry wine or ale, without letting it get too soft, season with red pepper, and cayenne. Moisten lightly with melted butter the prepared slices of bread, toast them on both sides cover one side with a layer of the cheese preparation; dredge over them some grated parmesan, and lay the slices on a dish to push it in the oven so as to color the tops, or else use a salamander (Fig. 123) for the purpose; arrange these toasts around a remove or else serve them separately on a folded napkin or simply on a plate.

For Chester Cheese.—Use the same slices of bread, only instead of toasting them, lay them in a sautoire with hot clarified butter; brown them on one side only, then drain, and leave the butter in the sautoire. Cover the fried sides with a layer of grated cheese (Chester), sprinkle over a dash of cayenne pepper, and return the crusts to the sautoire containing the butter, then push it into a moderately heated oven. When the cheese has become creamy, take out the sautoire, and dress the crusts either on folded napkins or around a remove.

← No. 652 Eggs with Cheese Garnishing Garnishings No. 654 Chestnut with Gravy Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of a cheese toast meant as a garnish around a main dish or as a small savoury course. Both are quick once the paste is mixed; the only real difficulty is heat management at the end.

The hinge: heat from above, brieflyThe topped toasts go under high heat only long enough to color and turn creamy — a minute or two under a broiler. Left longer, the grated cheese breaks and weeps butter, and the bread dries to a cracker.
Salamander means broilerThe tool in Fig. 123 is an iron plate on a handle heated in the fire and held over food to glaze it. A broiler set to high, with the pan on the upper rack, does the same job. The book's "moderately heated oven" is unquantified; a moderate oven, somewhere around 350F, is the usual modern reading.
Kitchen loafA plain, firm, close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, not an airy modern bakery loaf. Day-old bread cuts more cleanly into the 3/8-inch slices and 2 1/2 by 1 1/4 inch rectangles called for.
The cheeses"Swiss" here is Gruyere or Emmental; a quarter pound of each with parmesan gives a firm, salty base. "Chester" is the Continental trade name for Cheshire — a crumbly, slightly acidic cow's-milk cheese still made; a young Lancashire or a mild white cheddar behaves similarly when melted.
Three soupspoonfuls of StiltonA soupspoon in this book is roughly a tablespoon, so about 1 1/2 ounces of blue cheese mashed in. It is there for pungency, not bulk; more will overwhelm the parmesan.
Red pepper and cayenne"Red pepper" in this period often meant cayenne itself, so the two together are hard to pin down; since the recipe names both, the first is probably a milder ground dried pepper. Paprika plus a pinch of cayenne is a reasonable reading.
SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan that can go from stovetop to oven. Any oven-safe skillet works; the point is that the crusts return to the pan with its butter still in it, so the fried side stays crisp while the top melts.
Yield and serviceHalf a pound of grated cheese plus the Stilton will top roughly 18 to 24 of these small rectangles. A "remove" is the substantial course that replaced the fish or entree, so these were ranged around a platter of meat; served alone on a napkin they are a savoury for six to eight.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and its garnishings section is essentially a catalogue of things to set around a platter to give it height, color and salt. Cheese crusts belong to the long family of British cheese-on-toast dishes — Welsh rabbit and its relations — which the French kitchen absorbed as croutes au fromage. The mix of Gruyere, parmesan and Stilton moistened with sherry or ale shows how thoroughly an American luxury restaurant of the period shopped across borders: three imported cheeses in one spoonful of paste.