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Golden Buck
Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a frying pan and stir into it three cupfuls of grated or shaved cheese. As soon as it begins to become thoroughly melted, put over hot water. Stir until the mixture is thick and smooth, add a saltspoonful each of salt and dry mustard and serve on rounds of hot buttered toast. At the moment the cheese is done, there should be ready a poached egg for each person and every round or toast with its proportion of the cheese should have one of the eggs served upon it. This dish will be injured by standing for even a few moments. It is therefore a good plan to make the cheese part of it in a chafing dish, and have the eggs prepared in the kitchen and brought in just at the instant when they are required.
A Welsh rarebit with a poached egg on top, which is what makes it "golden." The whole dish turns on temperature control: cheese held over direct heat will break into oil and rubber.
- Move it off the burner earlyThe instruction to transfer to hot water as soon as the cheese begins to melt is the hinge of the recipe. A double boiler or a bowl over barely simmering water keeps the cheese below the point where the proteins tighten and squeeze out the fat.
- Cheese choiceThe recipe does not specify a cheese; a firm American or English cheddar suits. A well-aged cheddar is more prone to breaking; a young, moist cheddar or a mix of cheddar with a little Gruyere melts more forgivingly. Grate it rather than cubing so it comes together fast.
- Three cupfulsGrated cheese packs loosely; three cups is roughly 10-12 oz by weight. With one tablespoon of butter and no liquid, this is a very stiff rarebit, melted cheese rather than a sauce. A splash of ale, beer or milk stirred in as it melts gives a pourable consistency and is common in many modern versions.
- A saltspoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. Add the mustard with a caution — dry mustard blooms as it sits, and cheese is already salty.
- Poached eggs on demandRather than juggling timing, poach the eggs a few minutes ahead and hold them in warm (not hot) water; lift and drain on a towel just before serving. They will not overcook and you avoid the frantic coordination the original describes.
- Chafing dishThe suggestion to make it at table in a chafing dish is period-specific — chafing-dish suppers were a fashionable form of informal entertaining around 1900. A fondue pot or a warmed serving bowl does the same job of keeping it from setting.
- YieldEnough cheese for four to six rounds of toast, so four to six eggs. Scale down; the mixture does not reheat well.
Welsh rabbit is documented from the early eighteenth century, with "rarebit" appearing later as a genteel respelling. The account that the name was English mockery of a nation supposedly too poor for real game, with melted cheese standing in for the rabbit, is traditional rather than demonstrated. By the 1890s American cookbooks had multiplied the variations: the golden buck adds a poached egg, and a blushing bunny substitutes tomato. Chafing-dish cookery over a spirit lamp was fashionable in the 1890s and 1900s, when tabletop cookery let hosts serve hot food at late suppers and after-theatre gatherings without keeping a cook up. The warning against letting the dish stand follows from the dish itself: the appeal is cheese eaten the moment it comes off the heat.