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Some Rarebits
"The appetite of civilized man craves and custom encourages the putting together of many diverse materials," and that may be the reason that the baked bean awakes to find itself mixed up with cream and milk and cheese and the other component parts of a Welsh rarebit.
Press one cupful of cold baked beans through a colander. Into a sauce pan put a piece of butter the size of an egg, and when it melts, add the beans, one-half cupful of milk, with salt and paprika. Let this cook, and when it boils add the cheese cut in small pieces. One cupful of cheese will be sufficient. Add one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and serve on slices of toast.
Another way in which the simple rarebit is varied is by adding to it three tablespoonfuls of tomato pulp. After the butter in the sauce pan has melted, the tomato is added with salt and cayenne and three-quarters of a cupful of cream is stirred in, add two cupfuls of cheese cut in small bits. When the cheese has all melted a very little soda and two well-whipped eggs are added, the soda serving the purpose of neutralizing the acid of the tomatoes. Have slices of toast in readiness so that as soon as the various ingredients have combined, the mixture may be poured over them.
Two variations on a Welsh rarebit — one thickened with sieved baked beans, one with tomato and egg. Both hinge on gentle heat: a rarebit that boils hard after the cheese goes in will break into oil and rubbery strings.
- Butter the size of an eggRoughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Nineteenth-century books use the egg as a fat measure constantly and it is reliable enough at this scale.
- A cupful of cheeseCut in small bits, so roughly 4 oz, more than a cup of grated cheese would give, since cubes pack denser. A sharp Cheddar suits the dish; young supermarket Cheddar and pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch both break more readily.
- HeatKeep the pan at a bare simmer once the cheese goes in and stir constantly. The instruction to "let this cook" applies to the milk-and-bean base, not to the finished cheese mixture.
- The baked beansPresumably plain home-baked beans of the period rather than anything highly sauced, pressed through a colander to leave the skins behind. Modern canned beans in a sweetened tomato sauce will push the dish sweet; drain and rinse them first, or use plain white beans.
- A very little sodaAn eighth of a teaspoon at most, in the tomato version. Its job is to blunt the tomato acid so the cheese does not curdle; too much gives a soapy taste and a slippery texture.
- The two whipped eggsStir them in off the heat, or over the lowest flame, and keep moving. They will thicken in the residual heat of the cheese; left over direct heat they scramble in seconds.
- Tomato pulpSieved fresh tomato or passata, not paste and not ketchup. Three tablespoons is a modest amount against two cups of cheese.
- YieldEach version will probably serve three or four over toast. Have the toast cut, dry and hot before you start — rarebit stiffens as it cools and cannot be reheated well.
Welsh rabbit, later softened to "rarebit," is an eighteenth-century English tavern dish whose name is generally read as a joke at Welsh expense: cheese standing in for the meat a poorer household could not afford. By the turn of the twentieth century it had become a staple American chafing-dish supper, cooked at the table over a spirit lamp for late guests and after-theatre parties, which is why cookbooks of this period give it so much space. The variations here are characteristic of that moment, and the opening quotation about civilized appetite and "diverse materials" reads as a half-apology for what follows.