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Golden Buck
Finely chop one pound very rich, soft American cheese. Prepare six very fresh poached eggs and keep them in lukewarm water until needed. Prepare and keep hot six toasts. Pour one and a half gills Bass' ale in a small enamelled pan with a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and a good saltspoon cayenne pepper, and as soon as it begins to boil drop in the cheese and briskly and continually stir with a small, clean wooden spoon until thoroughly thickened. Place six very hot shirred-egg dishes on a plate, place a toast in each dish, evenly pour the preparation over the six toasts, then carefully lay a poached egg on top of each and immediately send to the table.
A Welsh rarebit with a poached egg on top, written for a restaurant line where six shirred-egg dishes sat warming and eggs could be poached in advance. The whole thing hinges on heat control once the cheese goes in.
- Never let it boil after the cheeseThe recipe brings the ale to a boil and adds the cheese at that point, without saying to move the pan. Cheese held at a boil expels its fat and turns into a stringy curd in a greasy puddle, so it is safer to drop the heat below a simmer once the cheese goes in and stir until it just flows smooth.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup of ale. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, and "a good saltspoon" of cayenne across six portions is assertive but not unreasonable.
- "American cheese" in 1906This means a domestic factory cheddar, young, high in moisture and quick to melt, not the wrapped processed slice the phrase now brings to mind. A mild to medium cheddar aged under a year, or a Colby, behaves the way the recipe expects. Aged cheddar has less moisture and is far more likely to break.
- Bass' aleAn English pale ale, malty and lightly bitter. Any pale ale or bitter works; avoid anything heavily hopped, since bitterness concentrates as the sauce thickens.
- Holding the poached eggsLukewarm water is a professional shortcut from a period with different assumptions about holding food. If you poach ahead, chill the eggs in ice water and reheat them for 30 seconds in water just off the boil rather than parking them at room temperature for any length of time.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall shallow ovenproof dishes, roughly 5 inches across, one per serving. Individual gratin dishes or a wide ramekin substitute exactly. Heat them thoroughly first; a cold dish sets the cheese sauce into a skin before it reaches the table.
- The toastCut it to fit the dish and toast it dark and dry. A pale, soft slice collapses under a cheese sauce and a poached egg within a minute.
- YieldSix servings, and a pound of cheese across six toasts is a substantial supper dish rather than a first course.
The dish is Welsh rarebit with a poached egg set on top, and the name follows the same joke: a "Welsh rabbit" is often said to have been melted cheese standing in for meat, and by the later nineteenth century chophouse and hotel menus in Britain and America had multiplied the variations into golden buck and buck rarebit, the "buck" generally taken as a play on the rabbit that never was. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, specifies a named imported ale, individual hot dishes and eggs poached in advance: this is service-counter technique brought home. The cayenne and Worcestershire are standard for the period, both doing the work of sharpening a mild young cheese that on its own would taste flat under an egg.