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Welsh Rarebit (Put in your pan two)
Put in your pan two tablespoonfuls of butter and add to it as soon as melted a third of a bottle of Bass ale, a teaspoonful of paprika, just a pinch of salt and a little black pepper. As soon as this comes to a boil, while stirring add your grated cheese, which constantly manipulate with a spoon until it can be beaten to the consistency of molasses. Now add four teaspoonfuls of made mustard. Stir and beat constantly until the mass begins to bubble and boil. The plates and toast being ready at your left, with some one to assist, plunge each piece of toast directly into the dish, turning it over with fork and spoon, and serve quickly on a hot plate.
A chafing-dish rarebit of the type served at late suppers, written for a cook who already knew how much cheese a rarebit takes. Two things need filling in: the cheese quantity and the temperature.
- The hinge: do not let it boilThe instruction to beat until the mass "begins to bubble and boil" is what ruins most rarebits. Cheese held above a bare simmer sheds its fat and turns into rubbery strings in a thin puddle. Keep the pan just below a simmer and stir until smooth.
- The missing quantityNo weight of cheese is given. For two tablespoons of butter and roughly half a cup of ale, use about 1/2 lb (225 g) of sharp cheddar, grated. Add it in handfuls, letting each melt before the next.
- A third of a bottle of BassBottled ale of the period came in various sizes, commonly from around 12 oz up to a pint, so a third works out somewhere between about 4 and 5 fl oz -- call it half a cup. Any bitter English-style pale ale works; the point is hop bitterness against the cheese, not the brand.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard is mustard already mixed with liquid, i.e. prepared mustard from a jar, not dry powder. Four teaspoonfuls is assertive but correct for this much cheese; English mustard is closer to the original than yellow ballpark mustard.
- Grated, not cubedThe recipe assumes grated cheese for a reason. Shred it on the coarse side of a box grater and let it come to room temperature so it melts before the pan overheats.
- Plunging the toastDipping the toast into the pan rather than pouring the sauce over it coats both sides, which is why the recipe calls for a helper. It also means the toast must be freshly made and dry, or it collapses. A slotted spatula does the job the "someone to assist" was there for.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. At the cheese quantity suggested above it would cover roughly four slices of toast, serving two as a supper dish or four as a savoury course. It does not reheat; make it at the table or immediately before serving.
Welsh rarebit is documented in English cookery from the eighteenth century, when it appeared as "Welsh rabbit" — often said to be a joke name for the meatless meal of a poor household, with "rarebit" arriving later as a genteel correction. By the 1890s it had become the signature dish of the American chafing dish, the alcohol-lamp pan that let hostesses and bachelors cook at the table after the theatre; cookbooks of that decade print rarebit variants by the half-dozen, sometimes, as here, keyed to a named brand of imported ale. The same chafing-dish supper saw rarebits, oyster stews, creamed oysters and lobster Newburg all cooked in the same pan on the same occasion.