Home › Cheese Dishes › Cheese Sticks
Cheese Sticks
Mix three cupfuls grated cheese, two tablespoonfuls flour, one teaspoonful salt and a few grains cayenne. Add the whites of six eggs beaten stiff. Shape, roll in cracker dust and fry in deep fat.
A late-Victorian cheese fritter, closer to a croquette than to the baked cheese straw the name now suggests. The recipe assumes a cook who knows what a deep fat kettle should feel like, so the two things worth supplying are a temperature and a way to make the sticks hold their shape.
- The hinge: chill before shapingThree cups of grated cheese bound only with flour and beaten whites is a very loose mass, and it will slump the moment it meets hot fat. Refrigerate the mixture at least an hour, shape short thick fingers, coat them, and chill again before frying.
- What cheese was meantAn unqualified "grated cheese" in a book of this period most likely meant a firm aged cheddar-type cheese, grated dry, though the recipe does not say so. Sharp cheddar or a cheddar-Parmesan mix works; fresh mozzarella or any high-moisture cheese will weep and burst the coating.
- QuantityThree cupfuls of grated hard cheese is roughly 8 to 12 oz by weight, depending how fine and how loosely it is grated. Weighing gives a far more predictable mixture than measuring by cup.
- Cracker dustSoda or common crackers rolled to a fine crumb, not the seasoned dried breadcrumb sold today. Crush plain saltines in a bag with a rolling pin; the fine, almost floury texture is what makes the coating seal.
- Deep fat temperatureFry at 375F. Lower and the whites absorb grease before they set; higher and the crust colors while the interior is still cool cheese. Two to three minutes, turning once, is enough.
- Egg whitesSix whites beaten stiff is a large volume of foam for this amount of cheese, and it will deflate as you fold. Fold in about half, judge the stiffness, and add more only if the mass is too dry to shape.
- Yield and servingThe quantity will make roughly two dozen short sticks, depending how large you shape them. Hot fried cheese of this kind was generally served as a savory alongside salad or soup, and it must go to the table straight from the fat; reheated, the interior turns oily and tough.
Cheese sticks of this kind belong to the American "cheese dishes" chapter that is often said to have expanded around 1900, when cheddar was cheap, plentiful and factory-made, and when chafing-dish suppers are traditionally credited with making hot cheese a respectable light meal rather than a laborer's dinner. The name is shared with the baked cheese straw of English tradition, a rolled pastry strip, but this version is fried and leavened only by egg white, which puts it in the same family as the croquettes and fritters that filled out menus of the period. Recipes calling for six whites and no yolks may also reflect a plausible habit of the era's kitchens: yolks went into custards, mayonnaise and gold cake, and the whites had to be used somewhere, so dishes that absorbed them would have been welcome.