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Cheese Salad (Odd bits of cheese)
Odd bits of cheese to the amount of a pound grated, one hard boiled egg, one teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, one of salt, one of white sugar, one made mustard, one tablespoonful of vinegar, one of salad oil or melted butter; rub the yolk of the egg to a paste with the oil or butter, adding in order the salt, pepper, sugar, mustard and lastly the cheese; work all well together before putting in the vinegar. These mixtures bear a marvelous resemblance in taste to a deviled crab, and make a very good impromptu relish to eat with crackers and butter. It is still better if you add a cupful of cold minced chicken.
A late-Victorian way of using up cheese ends, closer to a potted cheese or pub-style cheese spread than to a salad in the modern sense. It comes together in a bowl in ten minutes.
- The cayenne is the thing to watchA full teaspoon of cayenne in a pound of cheese is aggressive by current palates, and nineteenth-century cayenne was frequently adulterated, so its heat is hard to compare with the pure ground chile sold now. Start with a quarter teaspoon, taste, and build.
- "Made mustard"This means prepared mustard from the jar, not mustard powder. An English or Dijon-style prepared mustard suits it; the quantity is a teaspoon.
- Odd bits of cheeseThe recipe assumes firm cheeses that grate: Cheddar, Cheshire, dry ends of anything aged. Blue and washed-rind scraps will dominate the mix, and fresh cheeses turn it to paste. Bring everything to room temperature or the mixture will not bind.
- The egg whiteOnly the yolk is called for, mashed with the fat to make the emulsion. Chop the white and fold it in at the end, or keep it back for something else.
- Order mattersWork the yolk and oil into a smooth paste first, then the dry seasonings, then the cheese, and only then the vinegar. Adding the acid early makes the mixture break and go grainy.
- Salad oilPeriod "salad oil" usually meant olive oil, though by the later nineteenth century cottonseed and other refined oils were also sold under the name. Melted butter is the stated alternative and gives a firmer set once chilled; a pound of grated cheese with a single tablespoon of fat is a stiff mixture, so add a little more oil if you want it spreadable.
- Yield and servingA pound of cheese makes roughly two cups of spread, enough for eight to twelve as a relish with crackers. Cover and refrigerate; it keeps about four days and improves after a few hours as the mustard and cayenne come forward.
- With chickenThe cupful of cold minced chicken turns it from a condiment into a light lunch dish, but it also makes it perishable in the ordinary way. Keep that version cold and eat it within a day or two.
Recipes of this kind sit at the junction of two Victorian habits: strict household thrift, which found a use for every cheese rind in the larder, and a fondness for high, peppery "devilled" flavours, whose origins are often traced to Anglo-Indian cooking. The author's remark that the mixture tastes like devilled crab is telling — cayenne, mustard and vinegar were the standard devilling trio, and applied to almost anything they produced a recognisably similar flavour, which is precisely what made an inexpensive pantry mixture pass as something richer. Filing it under "Salads" reflects period usage rather than modern: through the nineteenth century a salad often meant any cold dressed dish bound with oil, vinegar and mustard, chicken salad and lobster salad among them, with no requirement that greens be involved. The same technique, under names like potted cheese or cheese relish, appears throughout British and American cookbooks of the era as a supper dish to be eaten with crackers, toast or bread and butter.