No. 946a

Chester Crusts

Croutes au Chester

Cut some slices from a kitchen loaf, not too thin, fry them in butter on one side only in a flat saucepan or frying-pan; drain and cover the fried side with a thick layer of Chester cheese, sprinkle over with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Lay the crust again in the pan with more butter and push into a hot oven. When the cheese becomes creamy, the under part of the crusts should be dry, then remove from the oven and serve.

← No. 946 Golden Buck, Welsh Rarebit a la Cutting or Y Hot Side Dishes No. 947 Rissoles of Brain, Princetown →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cheese crouton in the French manner, from Ranhofer's chapter of hot savories. The whole trick is that only one side of the bread is fried at the start, so the second pass in the oven crisps the bare side while the cheese melts.

Chester cheese"Chester" is the French name for Cheshire, a crumbly, slightly salty English cow's-milk cheese. A firm white Cheshire is the right thing; a young Lancashire or a mild white cheddar substitutes acceptably, though cheddar melts greasier.
Kitchen loafA plain, close-crumbed white household loaf, unsweetened. Cut slices about half an inch thick — thin bread collapses under the cheese and turns to butter-soaked pulp.
"Hot oven"Read this as 425–450F. The point is speed: the cheese should go creamy before the bread has time to dry out past crisp into hard.
Flat saucepanA sauté pan or straight-sided skillet. It goes from stovetop to oven, so use cast iron or an ovenproof pan rather than anything with a plastic handle.
The second butterThe instruction to add more butter before the oven looks deliberate: it is presumably what crisps the still-raw underside, which the recipe says should be dry by the time the cheese is creamy.
TimingThe recipe gives none; in a hot oven five to eight minutes will usually do. Cheshire is a dry cheese and can separate if held too long, so pull the crusts as soon as the surface flows.
Yield and serviceFigure two crusts per person as a savory course or with soup. They must go to the table immediately; they are unsalvageable once cool.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this recipe shows how his kitchen thought -- an English cheese savory given a French title, filed among the croûtes and rissoles of the hot side dishes. "Chester" for Cheshire is standard nineteenth-century French usage; the name is usually explained by the city of Chester's role as the export point for the cheese, though that account is traditional rather than documented. The dish sits immediately after Ranhofer's Welsh rarebit and Golden Buck, in the same family of cheese-on-toast preparations. The distinguishing detail is technique rather than ingredient: frying one side, then buttering and roasting to finish the other, produces something closer to a fried crouton than to the softer toast beneath a rarebit.