The Complete Book of Cheese
by Bob Brown · English · Gutenberg #14293 · 446,979 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Complete Book of Cheese
Author: Bob Brown
Release date: December 7, 2004 [eBook #14293]
Most recently updated: January 30, 2026
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE BOOK OF CHEESE ***
BOB BROWN
The Complete Book
of Cheese
_Illustrations by_ Eric Blegvad
[Illustration]
_Gramercy Publishing Company
New York_
1955
_Author of_
THE WINE COOK BOOK
AMERICA COOKS
10,000 SNACKS
SALADS AND HERBS
THE SOUTH AMERICAN COOK BOOK
SOUPS, SAUCES AND GRAVIES
THE VEGETABLE COOK BOOK
LOOK BEFORE YOU COOK!
THE EUROPEAN COOK BOOK
THE WINING AND DINING QUIZ
MOST FOR YOUR MONEY
OUTDOOR COOKING
FISH AND SEAFOOD COOK BOOK
THE COUNTRY COOK BOOK
_Co-author of Food and Drink Books by_ The Browns
LET THERE BE BEER!
HOMEMADE HILARITY
[Illustration: TO]
TO
PHIL
ALPERT
_Turophile Extraordinary_
[Illustration: Contents]
1 I Remember Cheese
2 The Big Cheese
3 Foreign Greats
4 Native Americans
5 Sixty-five Sizzling Rabbits
6 The Fondue
7 Soufflés, Puffs and Ramekins
8 Pizzas, Blintzes, Pastes and Cheese Cake
9 Au Gratin, Soups, Salads and Sauces
10 Appetizers, Crackers, Sandwiches, Savories,
Snacks, Spreads and Toasts
11 "Fit for Drink"
12 Lazy Lou
APPENDIX--The A-B-Z of Cheese
INDEX OF RECIPES
[Illustration]
_Chapter One_
I Remember Cheese
Cheese market day in a town in the north of Holland. All the
cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the
millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a
hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a
crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries.
The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or
tea-taster. These Edamers have the trained ear of music-masters and,
merely by knuckle-rapping, can tell down to an air pocket left by a
gas bubble just how mature the interior is.
The connoisseurs use gingerbread as a mouth-freshener; and I, too,
that sunny day among the Edams, kept my gingerbread handy and made my
way from one fine cheese to another, trying out generous plugs from
the heaped cannon balls that looked like the ammunition dump at
Antietam.
I remember another market day, this time in Lucerne. All morning I
stocked up on good Schweizerkäse and better Gruyère. For lunch I had
cheese salad. All around me the farmers were rolling two-hundred-pound
Emmentalers, bigger than oxcart wheels. I sat in a little café,
absorbing cheese and cheese lore in equal quantities. I learned that a
prize cheese must be chock-full of equal-sized eyes, the gas holes
produced during fermentation. They must glisten like polished bar
glass. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its
flavor must be nutlike. (Nuts and Swiss cheese complement each other
as subtly as Gorgonzola and a ripe banana.) There are, I learned,
"blind" Swiss cheeses as well, but the million-eyed ones are better.
But I don't have to hark back to Switzerland and Holland for cheese
memories. Here at home we have increasingly taken over the cheeses of
all nations, first importing them, then imitating them, from Swiss
Engadine to what we call Genuine Sprinz. We've naturalized
Scandinavian Blues and smoked browns and baptized our own Saaland
Pfarr in native whiskey. Of fifty popular Italian types we duplicate
more than half, some fairly well, others badly.
We have our own legitimate offspring too, beginning with the
Pineapple, supposed to have been first made about 1845 in Litchfield
County, Connecticut. We have our own creamy Neufchâtel, New York Coon,
Vermont Sage, the delicious Liederkranz, California Jack, Nuworld, and
dozens of others, not all quite so original.
And, true to the American way, we've organized cheese-eating. There's
an annual cheese week, and a cheese month (October). We even boast a
mail-order Cheese-of-the-Month Club. We haven't yet reached the point
of sophistication, however, attained by a Paris cheese club that meets
regularly. To qualify for membership you have to identify two hundred
basic cheeses, and you have to do it blindfolded.
This is a test I'd prefer not to submit to, but in my amateur way I
have during the past year or two been sharpening my cheese perception
with whatever varieties I could encounter around New York. I've run
into briny Caucasian Cossack, Corsican Gricotta, and exotics like
Rarush Durmar, Travnik, and Karaghi La-la. Cheese-hunting is one of
the greatest--and least competitively crowded--of sports. I hope this
book may lead others to give it a try.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Two_
The Big Cheese
One of the world's first outsize cheeses officially weighed in at four
tons in a fair at Toronto, Canada, seventy years ago. Another
monstrous Cheddar tipped the scales at six tons in the New York State
Fair at Syracuse in 1937.
Before this, a one-thousand-pounder was fetched all the way from New
Zealand to London to star in the Wembley Exposition of 1924. But,
compared to the outsize Syracusan, it looked like a Baby Gouda. As a
matter of fact, neither England nor any of her great dairying colonies
have gone in for mammoth jobs, except Canada, with that four-tonner
shown at Toronto.
We should mention two historic king-size Chesters. You can find out
all about them in _Cheddar Gorge,_ edited by Sir John Squire. The
first of them weighed 149 pounds, and was the largest made, up to the
year 1825. It was proudly presented to H.R.H. the Duke of York. (Its
heft almost tied the 147-pound Green County wheel of Wisconsin Swiss
presented by the makers to President Coolidge in 1928 in appreciation
of his raising the protective tariff against genuine Swiss to 50
percent.) While the cheese itself weighed a mite under 150, His Royal
Highness, ruff, belly, knee breeches, doffed high hat and all, was a
hundred-weight heavier, and thus almost dwarfed it.
It was almost a century later that the second record-breaking Chester
weighed in, at only 200 pounds. Yet it won a Gold Medal and a
Challenge Cup and was presented to the King, who graciously accepted
it. This was more than Queen Victoria had done with a bridal gift
cheese that tipped the scales at 1,100 pounds. It took a whole day's
yield from 780 contented cows, and stood a foot and eight inches high,
measuring nine feet, four inches around the middle. The assembled
donors of the cheese were so proud of it that they asked royal
permission to exhibit it on a round of country fairs. The Queen
assented to this ambitious request, perhaps prompted by the
exhibition-minded Albert. The publicity-seeking cheesemongers assured
Her Majesty that the gift would be returned to her just as soon as it
had been exhibited. But the Queen didn't want it back after it was
show-worn. The donors began to quarrel among themselves about what to
do with the remains, until finally it got into Chancery where so many
lost causes end their days. The cheese was never heard of again.
While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better,
(much the same as a magnum bottle of champagne is better than a pint),
there is a limit to the obesity of a block, ball or brick of almost
any kinds of cheese. When they pass a certain limit, they lack
homogeneity and are not nearly so good as the smaller ones. Today a
good magnum size for an exhibition Cheddar is 560 pounds; for a prize
Provolone, 280 pounds; while a Swiss wheel of only 210 will draw
crowds to any food-shop window.
Yet by and large it's the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of
Fame and come down to us in song and story. For example, that four-ton
Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as
the local undertaker.
We have thee, mammoth cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease;
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.
All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the greatest provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world's show at Paris.
Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek; then song or glees
We could not sing, oh, Queen of Cheese.
An ode to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by "The
Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire." This was in the
summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Massachusetts,
turned out en masse to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green
for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson. The unique
demonstration occurred spontaneously in jubilant commemoration of the
greatest political triumph of a new country in a new century--the
victory of the Democrats over the Federalists. Its collective making
was heralded in Boston's _Mercury and New England Palladium_,
September 8, 1801:
_The Mammoth Cheese_
AN EPICO-LYRICO BALLAD
From meadows rich, with clover red,
A thousand heifers come;
The tinkling bells the tidings spread,
The milkmaid muffles up her head,
And wakes the village hum.
In shining pans the snowy flood
Through whitened canvas pours;
The dyeing pots of otter good
And rennet tinged with madder blood
Are sought among their stores.
The quivering curd, in panniers stowed,
Is loaded on the jade,
The stumbling beast supports the load,
While trickling whey bedews the road
Along the dusty glade.
As Cairo's slaves, to bondage bred,
The arid deserts roam,
Through trackless sands undaunted tread,
With skins of water on their head
To cheer their masters home,
So here full many a sturdy swain
His precious baggage bore;
Old misers e'en forgot their gain,
And bed-rid cripples, free from pain,
Now took the road before.
The widow, with her dripping mite
Upon her saddle horn,
Rode up in haste to see the sight
And aid a charity so right,
A pauper so forlorn.
The circling throng an opening drew
Upon the verdant-grass
To let the vast procession through
To spread their rich repast in view,
And Elder J. L. pass.
Then Elder J. with lifted eyes
In musing posture stood,
Invoked a blessing from the skies
To save from vermin, mites and flies,
And keep the bounty good.
Now mellow strokes the yielding pile
From polished steel receives,
And shining nymphs stand still a while,
Or mix the mass with salt and oil,
With sage and savory leaves.
Then sextonlike, the patriot troop,
With naked arms and crown,
Embraced, with hardy hands, the scoop,
And filled the vast expanded hoop,
While beetles smacked it down.
Next girding screws the ponderous beam,
With heft immense, drew down;
The gushing whey from every seam
Flowed through the streets a rapid stream,
And shad came up to town.
This spirited achievement of early democracy is commemorated today by
a sign set up at the ancient and honorable town of Cheshire, located
between Pittsfield and North Adams, on Route 8.
Jefferson's speech of thanks to the democratic people of Cheshire
rings out in history: "I look upon this cheese as a token of fidelity
from the very heart of the people of this land to the great cause of
equal rights to all men."
This popular presentation started a tradition. When Van Buren
succeeded to the Presidency, he received a similar mammoth cheese in
token of the high esteem in which he was held. A monstrous one, bigger
than the Jeffersonian, was made by New Englanders to show their
loyalty to President Jackson. For weeks this stood in state in the
hall of the White House. At last the floor was a foot deep in the
fragments remaining after the enthusiastic Democrats had eaten their
fill.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Three_
Foreign Greats
_Ode to Cheese_
God of the country, bless today Thy cheese,
For which we give Thee thanks on bended knees.
Let them be fat or light, with onions blent,
Shallots, brine, pepper, honey; whether scent
Of sheep or fields is in them, in the yard
Let them, good Lord, at dawn be beaten hard.
And let their edges take on silvery shades
Under the moist red hands of dairymaids;
And, round and greenish, let them go to town
Weighing the shepherd's folding mantle down;
Whether from Parma or from Jura heights,
Kneaded by august hands of Carmelites,
Stamped with the mitre of a proud abbess.
Flowered with the perfumes of the grass of Bresse,
From hollow Holland, from the Vosges, from Brie,
From Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Italy!
Bless them, good Lord! Bless Stilton's royal fare,
Red Cheshire, and the tearful cream Gruyère.
FROM JETHRO BITHELL'S TRANSLATION
OF A POEM BY M. Thomas Braun
_Symphonie des Fromages_
A giant Cantal, seeming to have been chopped open with an ax,
stood aside of a golden-hued Chester and a Swiss Gruyère
resembling the wheel of a Roman chariot There were Dutch Edams,
round and blood-red, and Port-Saluts lined up like soldiers on
parade. Three Bries, side by side, suggested phases of the moon;
two of them, very dry, were amber-colored and "full," and the
third, in its second quarter, was runny and creamy, with a "milky
way" which no human barrier seemed able to restrain. And all the
while majestic Roqueforts looked down with princely contempt upon
the other, through the glass of their crystal covers.
Emile Zola
In 1953 the United States Department of Agriculture published Handbook
No. 54, entitled _Cheese Varieties and Descriptions,_ with this
comment: "There probably are only about eighteen distinct types or
kinds of natural cheese." All the rest (more than 400 names) are of
local origin, usually named after towns or communities. A list of the
best-known names applied to each of these distinct varieties or groups
is given:
Brick Gouda Romano
Camembert Hand Roquefort
Cheddar Limburger Sapsago
Cottage Neufchâtel Swiss
Cream Parmesan Trappist
Edam Provolone Whey cheeses (Mysost and Ricotta)
May we nominate another dozen to form our own Cheese Hall of Fame? We
begin our list with a partial roll call of the big Blues family and
end it with members of the monastic order of Port-Salut Trappist that
includes Canadian Oka and our own Kentucky thoroughbred.
The Blues that Are Green
Stilton, Roquefort and Gorgonzola form the triumvirate that rules a
world of lesser Blues. They are actually green, as green as the
mythical cheese the moon is made of.
In almost every, land where cheese is made you can sample a handful of
lesser Blues and imitations of the invincible three and try to
classify them, until you're blue in the face. The best we can do in
this slight summary is to mention a few of the most notable, aside
from our own Blues of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and other states
that major in cheese.
Danish Blues are popular and splendidly made, such as "Flower of
Denmark." The Argentine competes with a pampas-grass Blue all its own.
But France and England are the leaders in this line, France first with
a sort of triple triumvirate within a triumvirate--Septmoncel, Gex,
and Sassenage, all three made with three milks mixed together: cow,
goat and sheep. Septmoncel is the leader of these, made in the Jura
mountains and considered by many French caseophiles to outrank
Roquefort.
This class of Blue or marbled cheese is called fromage persillé, as
well as fromage bleu and pate bleue. Similar mountain cheeses are made
in Auvergne and Aubrac and have distinct qualities that have brought
them fame, such as Cantal, bleu d'Auvergne Guiole or Laguiole, bleu de
Salers, and St. Flour. Olivet and Queville come within the color
scheme, and sundry others such as Champoléon, Journiac, Queyras and
Sarraz.
Of English Blues there are several celebrities beside Stilton and
Cheshire Stilton. Wensleydale was one in the early days, and still
is, together with Blue Dorset, the deepest green of them all, and
esoteric Blue Vinny, a choosey cheese not liked by everybody, the
favorite of Thomas Hardy.
Brie
Sheila Hibben once wrote in _The New Yorker:_
I can't imagine any difference of opinion about Brie's being the queen
of all cheeses, and if there is any such difference, I shall certainly
ignore it. The very shape of Brie--so uncheese-like and so charmingly
fragile--is exciting. Nine times out of ten a Brie will let you
down--will be all caked into layers, which shows it is too young, or
at the over-runny stage, which means it is too old--but when you come
on the tenth Brie, _coulant_ to just the right, delicate creaminess,
and the color of fresh, sweet butter, no other cheese can compare with
it.
The season of Brie, like that of oysters, is simple to remember: only
months with an "R," beginning with September, which is the best, bar
none.
Caciocavallo
From Bulgaria to Turkey the Italian "horse cheese," as Caciocavallo
translates, is as universally popular as it is at home and in all the
Little Italics throughout the rest of the world. Flattering imitations
are made and named after it, as follows:
BULGARIA: Kascaval
GREECE: Kashcavallo and Caskcaval
HUNGARY: Parenica
RUMANIA: Pentele and Kascaval
SERBIA: Katschkawalj
SYRIA: Cashkavallo
TRANSYLVANIA: Kascaval (as in Rumania)
TURKEY: Cascaval Penir
YUGOSLAVIA: Kackavalj
A horse's head printed on the cheese gave rise to its popular name and
to the myth that it is made of mare's milk. It is, however, curded
from cow's milk, whole or partly skimmed, and sometimes from water
buffalo; hard, yellow and so buttery that the best of it, which comes
from Sorrento, is called _Cacio burro,_ butter cheese. Slightly salty,
with a spicy tang, it is eaten sliced when young and mild and used for
grating and seasoning when old, not only on the usual Italian pastes
but on sweets.
Different from the many grating cheeses made from little balls of curd
called _grana_, Caciocavallo is a _pasta fileta_, or drawn-curd
product. Because of this it is sometimes drawn out in long thick
threads and braided. It is a cheese for skilled artists to make
sculptures with, sometimes horses' heads, again bunches of grapes and
other fruits, even as Provolone is shaped like apples and pears and
often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the
horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob
on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on
opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and
rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the more buttery.
In Calabria and Sicily it is very popular, and although the best comes
from Sorrento, there is keen competition from Abruzzi, Apulian
Province and Molise. It keeps well and doesn't spoil when shipped
overseas.
In his _Little Book of Cheese_ Osbert Burdett recommends the high,
horsy strength of this smoked Cacio over tobacco smoke after dinner:
Only monsters smoke at meals, but a monster assured me that
Gorgonzola best survives this malpractice. Clearly, some pungency
is necessary, and confidence suggests rather Cacio which would
survive anything, the monster said.
Camembert
Camembert is called "mold-matured" and all that is genuine is labeled
_Syndicat du Vrai Camembert_. The name in full is _Syndicat des
Fabricants du Veritable Camembert de Normandie_ and we agree that this
is "a most useful association for the defense of one of the best
cheeses of France." Its extremely delicate piquance cannot be matched,
except perhaps by Brie.
Napoleon is said to have named it and to have kissed the waitress who
first served it to him in the tiny town of Camembert. And there a
statue stands today in the market place to honor Marie Harel who made
the first Camembert.
Camembert is equally good on thin slices of apple, pineapple, pear,
French "flute" or pumpernickel. As-with Brie and with oysters,
Camembert should be eaten only in the "R" months, and of these
September is the best.
Since Camembert rhymes with beware, if you can't get the _véritable_
don't fall for a domestic imitation or any West German abomination
such as one dressed like a valentine in a heart-shaped box and labeled
"Camembert--Cheese Exquisite." They are equally tasteless, chalky with
youth, or choking with ammoniacal gas when old and decrepit.
Cheddar
The English _Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_ says:
Cheddar cheese is one of the kings of cheese; it is pale coloured,
mellow, salvy, and, when good, resembling a hazelnut in flavour.
The Cheddar principle pervades the whole cheesemaking districts
of America, Canada and New Zealand, but no cheese imported into
England can equal the Cheddars of Somerset and the West of
Scotland.
Named for a village near Bristol where farmer Joseph Harding first
manufactured it, the best is still called Farmhouse Cheddar, but in
America we have practically none of this. Farmhouse Cheddar must be
ripened at least nine months to a mellowness, and little of our
American cheese gets as much as that. Back in 1695 John Houghton wrote
that it "contended in goodness (if kept from two to five years,
according to magnitude) with any cheese in England."
Today it is called "England's second-best cheese," second after
Stilton, of course.
In early days a large cheese sufficed for a year or two of family
feeding, according to this old note: "A big Cheddar can be kept for
two years in excellent condition if kept in a cool room and turned
over every other day."
But in old England some were harder to preserve: "In Bath... I asked
one lady of the larder how she kept Cheddar cheese. Her eyes twinkled:
'We don't keep cheese; we eats it.'"
Cheshire
A Cheshireman sailed into Spain
To trade for merchandise;
When he arrived from the main
A Spaniard him espies.
Who said, "You English rogue, look here!
What fruits and spices fine
Our land produces twice a year.
Thou has not such in thine."
The Cheshireman ran to his hold
And fetched a Cheshire cheese,
And said, "Look here, you dog, behold!
We have such fruits as these.
Your fruits are ripe but twice a year,
As you yourself do say,
But such as I present you here
Our land brings twice a day."
Anonymous
Let us pass on to cheese. We have some glorious cheeses, and far
too few people glorying in them. The Cheddar of the inn, of the
chophouse, of the average English home, is a libel on a thing
which, when authentic, is worthy of great honor. Cheshire,
divinely commanded into existence as to three parts to precede
and as to one part to accompany certain Tawny Ports and some
Late-Bottled Ports, can be a thing for which the British Navy
ought to fire a salute on the principle on which Colonel Brisson
made his regiment salute when passing the great Burgundian
vineyard.
T. Earle Welby,
IN "THE DINNER KNELL"
Cheshire is not only the most literary cheese in England, but the
oldest. It was already manufactured when Caesar conquered Britain, and
tradition is that the Romans built the walled city of Chester to
control the district where the precious cheese was made. Chester on
the River Dee was a stronghold against the Roman invasion.
It came to fame with The Old Cheshire Cheese in Elizabethan times and
waxed great with Samuel Johnson presiding at the Fleet Street Inn
where White Cheshire was served "with radishes or watercress or celery
when in season," and Red Cheshire was served toasted or stewed in a
sort of Welsh Rabbit. (_See_ Chapter 5.)
The Blue variety is called Cheshire-Stilton, and Vyvyan Holland, in
_Cheddar Gorge_ suggests that "it was no doubt a cheese of this sort,
discovered and filched from the larder of the Queen of Hearts, that
accounted for the contented grin on the face of the Cheshire Cat in
Alice in Wonderland."
All very English, as recorded in Victor Meusy's couplet:
_Dans le Chester sec et rose
A longues dents, l'Anglais mord._
In the Chester dry and pink
The long teeth of the English sink.
Edam and Gouda
_Edam in Peace and War_
There also coming into the river two Dutchmen, we sent a couple of men
on board and brought three Holland cheeses, cost 4d. a piece,
excellent cheeses.
Pepys' _Diary_, March 2,1663
Commodore Coe, of the Montevidian Navy, defeated Admiral Brown of
the Buenos Ayrean Navy, in a naval battle, when he used Holland
cheese for cannon balls.
_The Harbinger_ (Vermont), December 11, 1847
The crimson cannon balls of Holland have been heard around the world.
Known as "red balls" in England and _katzenkopf,_ "cat's head," in
Germany, they differ from Gouda chiefly in the shape, Gouda being
round but flattish and now chiefly imported as one-pound Baby Goudas.
Edam when it is good is very, very good, but when it is bad it is
horrid. Sophisticated ones are sent over already scalloped for the
ultimate consumer to add port, and there are crocks of Holland cheese
potted with sauterne. Both Edam and Gouda should be well aged to
develop full-bodied quality, two years being the accepted standard for
Edam.
The best Edams result from a perfect combination of Breed
(black-and-white Dutch Friesian) and Feed (the rich pasturage of
Friesland and Noord Holland).
The Goudas, shaped like English Derby and Belgian Delft and Leyden,
come from South Holland. Some are specially made for the Jewish trade
and called Kosher Gouda. Both Edam and Gouda are eaten at mealtimes
thrice daily in Holland. A Dutch breakfast without one or the other on
black bread with butter and black coffee would be unthinkable. They're
also boon companions to plum bread and Dutch cocoa.
"Eclair Edams" are those with soft insides.
Emmentaler, Gruyère and Swiss
When the working woman
Takes her midday lunch,
It is a piece of Gruyère
Which for her takes the place of roast.
Victor Meusy
Whether an Emmentaler is eminently Schweizerkäse, grand Gruyère from
France, or lesser Swiss of the United States, the shape, size and
glisten of the eyes indicate the stage of ripeness, skill of making
and quality of flavor. They must be uniform, roundish, about the size
of a big cherry and, most important of all, must glisten like the eye
of a lass in love, dry but with the suggestion of a tear.
Gruyère does not see eye to eye with the big-holed Swiss Saanen
cartwheel or American imitation. It has tiny holes, and many of them;
let us say it is freckled with pinholes, rather than pock-marked. This
variety is technically called a _niszler_, while one without any holes
at all is "blind." Eyes or holes are also called vesicles.
Gruyère Trauben (Grape Gruyère) is aged in Neuchâtel wine in
Switzerland, although most Gruyère has been made in France since its
introduction there in 1722. The most famous is made in the Jura, and
another is called Comté from its origin in Franche-Comté.
A blind Emmentaler was made in Switzerland for export to Italy where
it was hardened in caves to become a grating cheese called Raper, and
now it is largely imitated there. Emmentaler, in fact, because of its
piquant pecan-nut flavor and inimitable quality, is simulated
everywhere, even in Switzerland.
Besides phonies from Argentina and countries as far off as Finland, we
get a flood of imported and domestic Swisses of all sad sorts, with
all possible faults--from too many holes, that make a flabby, wobbly
cheese, to too few--cracked, dried-up, collapsed or utterly ruined by
molding inside. So it will pay you to buy only the kind already marked
genuine in Switzerland. For there cheese such as Saanen takes six
years to ripen, improves with age, and keeps forever.
Cartwheels well over a hundred years old are still kept in cheese
cellars (as common in Switzerland as wine cellars are in France), and
it is said that the rank of a family is determined by the age and
quality of the cheese in its larder.
Feta and Casere
The Greeks have a name for it--Feta. Their neighbors call it Greek
cheese. Feta is to cheese what Hymettus is to honey. The two together
make ambrosial manna. Feta is soft and as blinding white as a plate of
fresh Ricotta smothered with sour cream. The whiteness is preserved by
shipping the cheese all the way from Greece in kegs sloshing full of
milk, the milk being renewed from time to time. Having been cured in
brine, this great sheep-milk curd is slightly salty and somewhat
sharp, but superbly spicy.
When first we tasted it fresh from the keg with salty milk dripping
through our fingers, we gave it full marks. This was at the Staikos
Brothers Greek-import store on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. We then
compared Feta with thin wisps of its grown-up brother, Casere. This
gray and greasy, hard and brittle palate-tickler of sheep's milk made
us bleat for more Feta.
Gorgonzola
Gorgonzola, least pretentious of the Blues triumvirate (including
Roquefort and Stilton) is nonetheless by common consent monarch of all
other Blues from Argentina to Denmark. In England, indeed, many
epicures consider Gorgonzola greater than Stilton, which is the
highest praise any cheese can get there. Like all great cheeses it
has been widely imitated, but never equaled. Imported Gorgonzola, when
fruity ripe, is still firm but creamy and golden inside with rich
green veins running through. Very pungent and highly flavored, it is
eaten sliced or crumbled to flavor salad dressings, like Roquefort.
Hablé Crème Chantilly
The name Hablé Crème Chantilly sounds French, but the cheese is
Swedish and actually lives up to the blurb in the imported package:
"The overall characteristic is indescribable and delightful
freshness."
This exclusive product of the Walk Gärd Creamery was hailed by Sheila
Hibben in _The New Yorker_ of May 6, 1950, as enthusiastically as
Brillat-Savarin would have greeted a new dish, or the Planetarium a
new star:
Endeavoring to be as restrained as I can, I shall merely suggest
that the arrival of Crème Chantilly is a historic event and that
in reporting on it I feel something of the responsibility that
the contemporaries of Madame Harel, the famous cheese-making lady
of Normandy, must have felt when they were passing judgment on
the first Camembert.
Miss Hibben goes on to say that only a fromage à la crème made in
Quebec had come anywhere near her impression of the new Swedish
triumph. She quotes the last word from the makers themselves: "This is
a very special product that has never been made on this earth before,"
and speaks of "the elusive flavor of mushrooms" before summing up,
"the exquisitely textured curd and the unexpectedly fresh flavor
combine to make it one of the most subtly enjoyable foods that have
come my way in a long time."
And so say we--all of us.
Hand Cheese
Hand cheese has this niche in our Cheese Hall of Fame not because we
consider it great, but because it is usually included among the
eighteen varieties on which the hundreds of others are based. It is
named from having been molded into its final shape by hand.
Universally popular with Germanic races, it is too strong for the
others. To our mind, Hand cheese never had anything that Allgäuer or
Limburger hasn't improved upon.
It is the only cheese that is commonly melted into steins of beer and
drunk instead of eaten. It is usually studded with caraway seeds, the
most natural spice for curds.
Limburger
Limburger has always been popular in America, ever since it was
brought over by German-American immigrants; but England never took to
it. This is eloquently expressed in the following entry in the English
_Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_:
Limburger cheese is chiefly famous for its pungently offensive
odor. It is made from skimmed milk, and allowed to partially
decompose before pressing. It is very little known in this
country, and might be less so with advantage to consumers.
But this is libel. Butter-soft and sapid, Limburger has brought
gustatory pleasure to millions of hardy gastronomes since it came to
light in the province of Lüttich in Belgium. It has been Americanized
for almost a century and is by now one of the very few cheeses
successfully imitated here, chiefly in New York and Wisconsin.
Early Wisconsiners will never forget the Limburger Rebellion in Green
County, when the people rose in protest against the Limburger caravan
that was accustomed to park in the little town of Monroe where it was
marketed. They threatened to stage a modern Boston Tea Party and dump
the odoriferous bricks in the river, when five or six wagonloads were
left ripening in the sun in front of the town bank. The Limburger was
finally stored safely underground.
Livarot
Livarot has been described as decadent, "The very Verlaine of them
all," and Victor Meusy personifies it in a poem dedicated to all the
great French cheeses, of which we give a free translation:
In the dog days
In its overflowing dish
Livarot gesticulates
Or weeps like a child.
Münster
At the diplomatic banquet
One must choose his piece.
All is politics,
A cheese and a flag.
You annoy the Russians
If you take Chester;
You irritate the Prussians
In choosing Münster.
Victor Meusy
Like Limburger, this male cheese, often caraway-flavored, does not
fare well in England. Although over here we consider Münster far
milder than Limburger, the English writer Eric Weir in _When Madame
Cooks_ will have none of it:
I cannot think why this cheese was not thrown from the aeroplanes
during the war to spread panic amongst enemy troops. It would have
proved far more efficacious than those nasty deadly gases that kill
people permanently.
Neufchâtel
If the cream cheese be white
Far fairer the hands that made them.
Arthur Hugh Clough
Although originally from Normandy, Neufchâtel, like Limburger, was so
long ago welcomed to America and made so splendidly at home here that
we may consider it our very own. All we have against it is that it has
served as the model for too many processed abominations.
Parmesan, Romano, Pecorino, Pecorino Romano
Parmesan when young, soft and slightly crumbly is eaten on bread. But
when well aged, let us say up to a century, it becomes Rock of
Gibraltar of cheeses and really suited for grating. It is easy to
believe that the so-called "Spanish cheese" used as a barricade by
Americans in Nicaragua almost a century ago was none other than the
almost indestructible Grana, as Parmesan is called in Italy.
The association between cheese and battling began in B.C. days with
the Jews and Romans, who fed cheese to their soldiers not only for its
energy value but as a convenient form of rations, since every army
travels on its stomach and can't go faster than its impedimenta. The
last notable mention of cheese in war was the name of the _Monitor_:
"A cheese box on a raft."
Romano is not as expensive as Parmesan, although it is as friable,
sharp and tangy for flavoring, especially for soups such as onion and
minestrone. It is brittle and just off-white when well aged.
Although made of sheep's milk, Pecorino is classed with both Parmesan
and Romano. All three are excellently imitated in Argentina. Romano
and Pecorino Romano are interchangeable names for the strong,
medium-sharp and piquant Parmesan types that sell for considerably
less. Most of it is now shipped from Sardinia. There are several
different kinds: Pecorino Dolce (sweet), Sardo Tuscano, and Pecorino
Romano Cacio, which relates it to Caciocavallo.
Kibitzers complain that some of the cheaper types of Pecorino are
soapy, but fans give it high praise. Gillian F., in her "Letter from
Italy" in Osbert Burdett's delectable _Little Book of Cheese_, writes:
Out in the orchard, my companion, I don't remember how, had
provided the miracle: a flask of wine, a loaf of bread and a slab
of fresh Pecorino cheese (there wasn't any "thou" for either) ...
But that cheese was Paradise; and the flask was emptied, and a
wood dove cooing made you think that the flask's contents were in
a crystal goblet instead of an enamel cup ... one only ... and
the cheese broken with the fingers ... a cheese of cheeses.
Pont L'Evêque
This semisoft, medium-strong, golden-tinted French classic made since
the thirteenth century, is definitely a dessert cheese whose
excellence is brought out best by a sound claret or tawny port.
Port-Salut (_See_ Trappist)
Provolone
Within recent years Provolone has taken America by storm, as
Camembert, Roquefort, Swiss, Limburger, Neufchâtel and such great
ones did long before. But it has not been successfully imitated here
because the original is made of rich water-buffalo milk unattainable
in the Americas.
With Caciocavallo, this mellow, smoky flavorsome delight is put up in
all sorts of artistic forms, red-cellophaned apples, pears, bells, a
regular zoo of animals, and in all sorts of sizes, up to a monumental
hundred-pound bas-relief imported for exhibition purposes by Phil
Alpert.
Roquefort
Homage to this _fromage!_ Long hailed as _le roi_ Roquefort, it has
filled books and booklets beyond count. By the miracle of _Penicillium
Roqueforti_ a new cheese was made. It is placed historically back
around the eighth century when Charlemagne was found picking out the
green spots of Persillé with the point of his knife, thinking them
decay. But the monks of Saint-Gall, who were his hosts, recorded in
their annals that when they regaled him with Roquefort (because it was
Friday and they had no fish) they also made bold to tell him he was
wasting the best part of the cheese. So he tasted again, found the
advice excellent and liked it so well he ordered two _caisses_ of it
sent every year to his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. He also suggested
that it be cut in half first, to make sure it was well veined with
blue, and then bound up with a wooden fastening.
Perhaps he hoped the wood would protect the cheeses from mice and
rats, for the good monks of Saint-Gall couldn't be expected to send an
escort of cats from their chalky caves to guard them--even for
Charlemagne. There is no telling how many cats were mustered out in
the caves, in those early days, but a recent census put the number at
five hundred. We can readily imagine the head handler in the caves
leading a night inspection with a candle, followed by his chief taster
and a regiment of cats. While the Dutch and other makers of cheese
also employ cats to patrol their storage caves, Roquefort holds the
record for number. An interesting point in this connection is that as
rats and mice pick only the prime cheeses, a gnawed one is not thrown
away but greatly prized.
Sapsago, Schabziger or Swiss Green Cheese
The name Sapsago is a corruption of Schabziger, German for whey
cheese. It's a hay cheese, flavored heavily with melilot, a kind of
clover that's also grown for hay. It comes from Switzerland in a hard,
truncated cone wrapped in a piece of paper that says:
To be used grated only
Genuine Swiss Green Cheese
Made of skimmed milk and herbs
To the housewives! Do you want a change in your meals? Try the
contents of this wrapper! Delicious as spreading mixed with butter,
excellent for flavoring eggs, macaroni, spaghetti, potatoes, soup,
etc. Can be used in place of any other cheese. _Do not take too
much, you might spoil the flavor_.
We put this wrapper among our papers, sealed it tight in an envelope,
and to this day, six months later, the scent of Sapsago clings 'round
it still.
Stilton
_Honor for Cheeses_
Literary and munching circles in London are putting quite a lot
of thought into a proposed memorial to Stilton cheese. There is a
Stilton Memorial Committee, with Sir John Squire at the head, and
already the boys are fighting.
One side, led by Sir John, is all for a monument.
This, presumably, would not be a replica of Stilton itself,
although Mr. Epstein could probably hack out a pretty effective
cheese-shaped figure and call it "Dolorosa."
The monument-boosters plan a figure of Mrs. Paulet, who first
introduced Stilton to England. (Possibly a group showing Mrs.
Paulet holding a young Stilton by the hand and introducing it,
while the Stilton curtsies.)
T.S. Eliot does not think that anyone would look at a monument,
but wants to establish a Foundation for the Preservation of
Ancient Cheeses. The practicability of this plan would depend
largely on the site selected for the treasure house and the cost
of obtaining a curator who could, or would, give his whole time
to the work.
Mr. J.A. Symonds, who is secretary of the committee, agrees with
Mr. Eliot that a simple statue is not the best form.
"I should like," he says, "something irrelevant--gargoyles,
perhaps."
I think that Mr. Symonds has hit on something there.
I would suggest, if we Americans can pitch into this great
movement, some gargoyles designed by Mr. Rube Goldberg.
If the memorial could be devised so as to take on an
international scope, an exchange fellowship might be established
between England and America, although the exchange, in the case
of Stilton, would have to be all on England's side.
We might be allowed to furnish the money, however, while England
furnishes the cheese.
There is a very good precedent for such a bargain between the two
countries.
Robert Benchley, in _After 1903--What?_
When all seems lost in England there is still Stilton, an endless
after-dinner conversation piece to which England points with pride.
For a sound appreciation of this cheese see Clifton Fadiman's
introduction to this book.
Taleggio and Bel Paese
When the great Italian cheese-maker, Galbini, first exported Bel Paese
some years ago, it was an eloquent ambassador to America. But as the
years went on and imitations were made in many lands, Galbini deemed
it wise to set up his own factory in _our_ beautiful country. However,
the domestic Bel Paese and a minute one-pounder called Bel Paesino
just didn't have that old Alpine zest. They were no better than the
German copy called Schönland, after the original, or the French Fleur
des Alpes.
Mel Fino was a blend of Bel Paese and Gorgonzola. It perked up the
market for a full, fruity cheese with snap. Then Galbini hit the
jackpot with his Taleggio that fills the need for the sharpest, most
sophisticated pungence of them all.
Trappist, Port-Salut, or Port du Salut, and Oka
In spite of its name Trappist is no rat-trap commoner. Always of the
elect, and better known as Port-Salut or Port du Salut from the
original home of the Trappist monks in their chief French abbey, it is
also set apart from the ordinary Canadians under the name of Oka, from
the Trappist monastery there. It is made by Trappist monks all over
the world, according to the original secret formula, and by Trappist
Cistercian monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist in Kentucky.
This is a soft cheese, creamy and of superb flavor. You can't go wrong
if you look for the monastery name stamped on, such as Harzé in
Belgium, Mont-des-Cats in Flanders, Sainte Anne d'Auray in Brittany,
and so forth.
Last but not least, a commercial Port-Salut entirely without benefit
of clergy or monastery is made in Milwaukee under the Lion Brand. It
is one of the finest American cheeses in which we have ever sunk a
fang.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Four_
Native Americans
American Cheddars
The first American Cheddar was made soon after 1620 around Plymouth by
Pilgrim fathers who brought along not only cheese from the homeland
but a live cow to continue the supply. Proof of our ability to
manufacture Cheddar of our own lies in the fact that by 1790 we were
exporting it back to England.
It was called Cheddar after the English original named for the village
of Cheddar near Bristol. More than a century ago it made a new name
for itself, Herkimer County cheese, from the section of New York State
where it was first made best. Herkimer still equals its several
distinguished competitors, Coon, Colorado Blackie, California Jack,
Pineapple, Sage, Vermont Colby and Wisconsin Longhorn.
The English called our imitation Yankee, or American, Cheddar, while
here at home it was popularly known as yellow or store cheese from its
prominent position in every country store; also apple-pie cheese
because of its affinity for the all-American dessert.
The first Cheddar factory was founded by Jesse Williams in Rome, New
York, just over a century ago and, with Herkimer County Cheddar
already widely known, this established "New York" as the preferred
"store-boughten" cheese.
An account of New York's cheese business in the pioneer Wooden Nutmeg
Era is found in Ernest Elmo Calkins' interesting book, _They Broke the
Prairies_. A Yankee named Silvanus Ferris, "the most successful
dairyman of Herkimer County," in the first decades of the 1800's
teamed up with Robert Nesbit, "the old Quaker Cheese Buyer." They
bought from farmers in the region and sold in New York City. And
"according to the business ethics of the times," Nesbit went ahead to
cheapen the cheese offered by deprecating its quality, hinting at a
bad market and departing without buying. Later when Ferris arrived in
a more optimistic mood, offering a slightly better price, the seller,
unaware they were partners, and ignorant of the market price, snapped
up the offer.
Similar sharp-trade tactics put too much green cheese on the market,
so those honestly aged from a minimum of eight months up to two years
fetched higher prices. They were called "old," such as Old Herkimer,
Old Wisconsin Longhorn, and Old California Jack.
Although the established Cheddar ages are three, fresh, medium-cured,
and cured or aged, commercially they are divided into two and
described as mild and sharp. The most popular are named for their
states: Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Vermont and
Wisconsin. Two New York Staters are called and named separately, Coon
and Herkimer County. Tillamook goes by its own name with no mention of
Oregon. Pineapple, Monterey Jack and Sage are seldom listed as
Cheddars at all, although they are basically that.
Brick
Brick is the one and only cheese for which the whole world gives
America credit. Runners-up are Liederkranz, which rivals say is too
close to Limburger, and Pineapple, which is only a Cheddar under its
crisscrossed, painted and flavored rind. Yet Brick is no more
distinguished than either of the hundred percent Americans, and in our
opinion is less worth bragging about.
It is a medium-firm, mild-to-strong slicing cheese for sandwiches and
melting in hot dishes. Its texture is elastic but not rubbery, its
taste sweetish, and it is full of little round holes or eyes. All this
has inspired enthusiasts to liken it to Emmentaler. The most
appropriate name for it has long been "married man's Limburger." To
make up for the mildness caraway seed is sometimes added.
About Civil War time, John Jossi, a dairyman of Dodge County,
Wisconsin, came up with this novelty, a rennet cheese made of whole
cow's milk. The curd is cut like Cheddar, heated, stirred and cooked
firm to put in a brick-shaped box without a bottom and with slits in
the sides to drain. When this is set on the draining table a couple of
bricks are also laid on the cooked curd for pressure. It is this
double use of bricks, for shaping and for pressing, that has led to
the confusion about which came first in originating the name.
The formed "bricks" of cheese are rubbed with salt for three days and
they ripen slowly, taking up to two months.
We eat several million pounds a year and 95 percent of that comes from
Wisconsin, with a trickle from New York.
Colorado Blackie Cheese
A subtly different American Cheddar is putting Colorado on our cheese
map. It is called Blackie from the black-waxed rind and it resembles
Vermont State cheese, although it is flatter. This is a proud new
American product, proving that although Papa Cheddar was born in
England his American kinfolk have developed independent and valuable
characters all on their own.
Coon Cheese
Coon cheese is full of flavor from being aged on shelves at a higher
temperature than cold storage. Its rind is darker from the growth of
mold and this shade is sometimes painted on more ordinary Cheddars to
make them look like Coon, which always brings a 10 percent premium
above the general run.
Made at Lowville, New York, it has received high praise from a host of
admirers, among them the French cook, Clementine, in Phineas Beck's
_Kitchen_, who raised it to the par of French immortals by calling it
Fromage de Coon. Clementine used it "with scintillating success in
countless French recipes which ended with the words _gratiner au four
et servir tres chaud_. She made _baguettes_ of it by soaking sticks
three-eights-inch square and one and a half inches long in lukewarm
milk, rolling them in flour, beaten egg and bread crumbs and browning
them instantaneously in boiling oil."
Herkimer County Cheese
The standard method for making American Cheddar was established in
Herkimer County, New York, in 1841 and has been rigidly maintained
down to this day. Made with rennet and a bacterial "starter," the curd
is cut and pressed to squeeze out all of the whey and then aged in
cylindrical forms for a year or more.
Herkimer leads the whole breed by being flaky, brittle, sharp and
nutty, with a crumb that will crumble, and a soft, mouth-watering pale
orange color when it is properly aged.
Isigny
Isigny is a native American cheese that came a cropper. It seems to be
extinct now, and perhaps that is all to the good, for it never meant
to be anything more than another Camembert, of which we have plenty of
imitation.
Not long after the Civil War the attempt was made to perfect Isigny.
The curd was carefully prepared according to an original formula,
washed and rubbed and set aside to come of age. But when it did, alas,
it was more like Limburger than Camembert, and since good domestic
Limburger was then a dime a pound, obviously it wouldn't pay off. Yet
in shape the newborn resembled Camembert, although it was much larger.
So they cut it down and named it after the delicate French Creme
d'lsigny.
Jack, California Jack and Monterey Jack
Jack was first known as Monterey cheese from the California county
where it originated. Then it was called Jack for short, and only now
takes its full name after sixty years of popularity on the West Coast.
Because it is little known in the East and has to be shipped so far,
it commands the top Cheddar price.
Monterey Jack is a stirred curd Cheddar without any annatto coloring.
It is sweeter than most and milder when young, but it gets sharper
with age and more expensive because of storage costs.
Liederkranz
No native American cheese has been so widely ballyhooed, and so
deservedly, as Liederkranz, which translates "Wreath of Song."
Back in the gay, inventive nineties, Emil Frey, a young delicatessen
keeper in New York, tried to please some bereft customers by making an
imitation of Bismarck Schlosskäse. This was imperative because the
imported German cheese didn't stand up during the long sea trip and
Emil's customers, mostly members of the famous Liederkranz singing
society, didn't feel like singing without it. But Emil's attempts at
imitation only added indigestion to their dejection, until one
day--_fabelhaft!_ One of those cheese dream castles in Spain came
true. He turned out a tawny, altogether golden, tangy and mellow
little marvel that actually was an improvement on Bismarck's old
Schlosskäse. Better than Brick, it was a deodorized Limburger, both a
man's cheese and one that cheese-conscious women adored.
Emil named it "Wreath of Song" for the Liederkranz customers. It soon
became as internationally known as tabasco from Texas or Parisian
Camembert which it slightly resembles. Borden's bought out Frey in
1929 and they enjoy telling the story of a G.I. who, to celebrate V-E
Day in Paris, sent to his family in Indiana, only a few miles from the
factory at Van Wert, Ohio, a whole case of what he had learned was
"the finest cheese France could make." And when the family opened it,
there was Liederkranz.
Another deserved distinction is that of being sandwiched in between
two foreign immortals in the following recipe:
Schnitzelbank Pot
1 ripe Camembert cheese
1 Liederkranz
1/8 pound imported Roquefort
1/4 pound butter
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup cream
1/2 cup finely chopped olives
1/4 cup canned pimiento
A sprinkling of cayenne
Depending on whether or not you like the edible rind of Camembert
and Liederkranz, you can leave it on, scrape any thick part off,
or remove it all. Mash the soft creams together with the
Roquefort, butter and flour, using a silver fork. Put the mix
into an enameled pan, for anything with a metal surface will
turn the cheese black in cooking.
Stir in the cream and keep stirring until you have a smooth,
creamy sauce. Strain through sieve or cheesecloth, and mix in the
olives and pimiento thoroughly. Sprinkle well with cayenne and
put into a pot to mellow for a few days, or much longer.
The name _Schnitzelbank_ comes from "school bench," a game. This
snappy-sweet pot is specially suited to a beer party and stein songs.
It is also the affinity-spread with rye and pumpernickel, and may be
served in small sandwiches or on crackers, celery and such, to make
appetizing tidbits for cocktails, tea, or cider.
Like the trinity of cheeses that make it, the mixture is eaten best at
room temperature, when its flavor is fullest. If kept in the
refrigerator, it should be taken out a couple of hours before serving.
Since it is a natural cheese mixture, which has gone through no
process or doping with preservative, it will not keep more than two
weeks. This mellow-sharp mix is the sort of ideal the factory
processors shoot at with their olive-pimiento abominations. Once
you've potted your own, you'll find it gives the same thrill as
garnishing your own Liptauer.
Minnesota Blue
The discovery of sandstone caves in the bluffs along the Mississippi,
in and near the Twin Cities of Minnesota, has established a
distinctive type of Blue cheese named for the state. Although the
Roquefort process of France is followed and the cheese is inoculated
in the same way by mold from bread, it can never equal the genuine
imported, marked with its red-sheep brand, because the milk used in
Minnesota Blue is cow's milk, and the caves are sandstone instead of
limestone. Yet this is an excellent, Blue cheese in its own right.
Pineapple
Pineapple cheese is named after its shape rather than its flavor,
although there are rumors that some pineapple flavor is noticeable
near the oiled rind. This flavor does not penetrate through to the
Cheddar center. Many makers of processed cheese have tampered with the
original, so today you can't be sure of anything except getting a
smaller size every year or two, at a higher price. Originally six
pounds, the Pineapple has shrunk to nearly six ounces. The proper
bright-orange, oiled and shellacked surface is more apt to be a sickly
lemon.
Always an ornamental cheese, it once stood in state on the side-board
under a silver bell also made to represent a pineapple. You cut a top
slice off the cheese, just as you would off the fruit, and there was a
rose-colored, fine-tasting, mellow-hard cheese to spoon out with a
special silver cheese spoon or scoop. Between meals the silver top was
put on the silver holder and the oiled and shellacked rind kept the
cheese moist. Even when the Pineapple was eaten down to the rind the
shell served as a dunking bowl to fill with some salubrious cold
Fondue or salad.
Made in the same manner as Cheddar with the curd cooked harder,
Pineapple's distinction lies in being hung in a net that makes
diamond-shaped corrugations on the surface, simulating the sections of
the fruit. It is a pioneer American product with almost a century and
a half of service since Lewis M. Norton conceived it in 1808 in
Litchfield County, Connecticut. There in 1845 he built a factory and
made a deserved fortune out of his decorative ingenuity with what
before had been plain, unromantic yellow or store cheese.
Perhaps his inspiration came from cone-shaped Cheshire in old England,
also called Pineapple cheese, combined with the hanging up of
Provolones in Italy that leaves the looser pattern of the four
sustaining strings.
Sage, Vermont Sage and Vermont State
The story of Sage cheese, or green cheese as it was called originally,
shows the several phases most cheeses have gone through, from their
simple, honest beginnings to commercialization, and sometimes back to
the real thing.
The English _Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_ has an early Sage
recipe:
This is a species of cream cheese made by adding sage leaves and
greening to the milk. A very good receipt for it is given thus:
Bruise the tops of fresh young red sage leaves with an equal
quantity of spinach leaves and squeeze out the juice. Add this to
the extract of rennet and stir into the milk as much as your
taste may deem sufficient. Break the curd when it comes, salt it,
fill the vat high with it, press for a few hours, and then turn
the cheese every day.
_Fancy Cheese in America, lay_ Charles A. Publow, records the
commercialization of the cheese mentioned above, a century or two
later, in 1910:
Sage cheese is another modified form of the Cheddar variety. Its
distinguishing features are a mottled green color and a sage
flavor. The usual method of manufacture is as follows: One-third
of the total amount of milk is placed in a vat by itself and
colored green by the addition of eight to twelve ounces of
commercial sage color to each 1,000 pounds of milk. If green corn
leaves (unavailable in England) or other substances are used for
coloring, the amounts will vary accordingly. The milk is then
made up by the regular Cheddar method, as is also the remaining
two-thirds, in a separate vat. At the time of removing the whey
the green and white curds are mixed. Some prefer, however, to mix
the curds at the time of milling, as a more distinct color is
secured. After milling, the sage extract flavoring is sprayed
over the curd with an atomizer. The curd is then salted and
pressed into the regular Cheddar shapes and sizes.
A very satisfactory Sage cheese is made at the New York State
College of Agriculture by simply dropping green coloring, made
from the leaves of corn and spinach, upon the curd, after
milling. An even green mottling is thus easily secured without
additional labor. Sage flavoring extract is sprayed over the curd
by an atomizer. One-half ounce of flavoring is usually sufficient
for a hundred pounds of curd and can be secured from dairy supply
houses.
A modern cheese authority reported on the current (1953) method:
Instead of sage leaves, or tea prepared from them, at present the
cheese is flavored with oil of Dalmatian wild sage because it has
the sharpest flavor. This piny oil, thujone, is diluted with
water, 250 parts to one, and either added to the milk or sprayed
over the curds, one-eighth ounce for 500 quarts of milk.
In scouting around for a possible maker of the real thing today, we
wrote to Vrest Orton of Vermont, and got this reply:
Sage cheese is one of the really indigenous and best native
Vermont products. So far as I know, there is only one factory
making it and that is my friend, George Crowley's. He makes a
limited amount for my Vermont Country Store. It is the fine
old-time full cream cheese, flavored with real sage.
On this hangs a tale. Some years ago I couldn't get enough sage
cheese (we never can) so I asked a Wisconsin cheesemaker if he
would make some. Said he would but couldn't at that time--because
the alfalfa wasn't ripe. I said, "What in hell has alfalfa got to
do with sage cheese?" He said, "Well, we flavor the sage cheese
with a synthetic sage flavor and then throw in some pieces of
chopped-up alfalfa to make it look green."
So I said to hell with that and the next time I saw George
Crowley I told him the story and George said, "We don't use
synthetic flavor, alfalfa or anything like that."
"Then what do you use, George?" I inquired.
"We use real sage."
"Why?"
"Well, because it's cheaper than that synthetic stuff."
The genuine Vermont Sage arrived. Here are our notes on it:
Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow! My taste buds come to full
flower with the Sage. There's a slight burned savor recalling
smoked cheese, although not related in any way. Mildly resinous
like that Near East one packed in pine, suggesting the well-saged
dressing of a turkey. A round mouthful of luscious mellowness,
with a bouquet--a snapping reminder to the nose. And there's just
a soupçon of new-mown hay above the green freckles of herb to
delight the eye and set the fancy free. So this is the _véritable
vert_, green cheese--the moon is made of it! _Vert véritable._ A
general favorite with everybody who ever tasted it, for
generations of lusty crumblers.
Old-Fashioned Vermont State Store Cheese
We received from savant Vrest Orton another letter, together with some
Vermont store cheese and some crackers.
This cheese is our regular old-fashioned store cheese--it's been
in old country stores for generations and we have been pioneers
in spreading the word about it. It is, of course, a natural aged
cheese, no processing, no fussing, no fooling with it. It's made
the same way it was back in 1870, by the old-time Colby method
which makes a cheese which is not so dry as Cheddar and also has
holes in it, something like Swiss. Also, it ages faster.
Did you know that during the last part of the nineteenth century
and part of the twentieth, Vermont was the leading cheesemaking
state in the Union? When I was a lad, every town in Vermont had
one or more cheese factories. Now there are only two left--not
counting any that make process. Process isn't cheese!
The crackers are the old-time store cracker--every Vermonter
used to buy a big barrel once a year to set in the buttery and
eat. A classic dish is crackers, broken up in a bowl of cold
milk, with a hunk of Vermont cheese like this on the side. Grand
snack, grand midnight supper, grand anything. These crackers are
not sweet, not salt, and as such make a good base for
anything--swell with clam chowder, also with toasted cheese....
Tillamook
It takes two pocket-sized, but thick, yellow volumes to record the
story of Oregon's great Tillamook. _The Cheddar Box_, by Dean Collins,
comes neatly boxed and bound in golden cloth stamped with a purple
title, like the rind of a real Tillamook. Volume I is entitled _Cheese
Cheddar_, and Volume II is a two-pound Cheddar cheese labeled
Tillamook and molded to fit inside its book jacket. We borrowed Volume
I from a noted _littérateur_, and never could get him to come across
with Volume II. We guessed its fate, however, from a note on the
flyleaf of the only tome available: "This is an excellent cheese, full
cream and medium sharp, and a unique set of books in which Volume II
suggests Bacon's: 'Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.'"
Wisconsin Longhorn
Since we began this chapter with all-American Cheddars, it is only
fitting to end with Wisconsin Longhorn, a sort of national standard,
even though it's not nearly so fancy or high-priced as some of the
regional natives that can't approach its enormous output. It's one of
those all-purpose round cheeses that even taste round in your mouth.
We are specially partial to it.
Most Cheddars are named after their states. Yet, putting all of these
thirty-seven states together, they produce only about half as much as
Wisconsin alone.
Besides Longhorn, in Wisconsin there are a dozen regional competitors
ranging from White Twin Cheddar, to which no annatto coloring has been
added, through Green Bay cheese to Wisconsin Redskin and Martha
Washington Aged, proudly set forth by P.H. Kasper of Bear Creek, who
is said to have "won more prizes in forty years than any ten
cheesemakers put together."
To help guarantee a market for all this excellent apple-pie cheese,
the Wisconsin State Legislature made a law about it, recognizing the
truth of Eugene Field's jingle:
Apple pie without cheese
Is like a kiss without a squeeze.
Small matter in the Badger State when the affinity is made legal and
the couple lawfully wedded in Statute No. 160,065. It's still in
force:
_Butter and cheese to be served._ Every person, firm or
corporation duly licensed to operate a hotel or restaurant shall
serve with each meal for which a charge of twenty-five cents or
more is made, at least two-thirds of an ounce of Wisconsin butter
and two-thirds of an ounce of Wisconsin cheese.
Besides Longhorn, Wisconsin leads in Limburger. It produces so much
Swiss that the state is sometimes called Swissconsin.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Five_
Sixty-five Sizzling Rabbits
That nice little smoky room at the "Salutation," which is even
now continually presenting itself to my recollection, with all
its associated train of pipes, egg-hot, welsh-rabbits,
metaphysics and poetry.
Charles Lamb, IN A LETTER TO COLERIDGE
Unlike the beginning of the classical Jugged Hare recipe: "First catch
your hare!" we modern Rabbit-hunters start off with "First catch your
Cheddar!" And some of us go so far as to smuggle in formerly forbidden
_fromages_ such as Gruyère, Neufchâtel, Parmesan, and mixtures
thereof. We run the gamut of personal preferences in selecting the
Rabbit cheese itself, from old-time American, yellow or store cheese,
to Coon and Canadian-smoked, though all of it is still Cheddar, no
matter how you slice it.
Then, too, guests are made to run the gauntlet of all-American
trimmings from pin-money pickles to peanut butter, succotash and maybe
marshmallows; we add mustard, chill, curry, tabasco and sundry bottled
red devils from the grocery store, to add pep and piquance to the
traditional cayenne and black pepper. This results in Rabbits that are
out of focus, out of order and out of this world.
Among modern sins of omission, the Worcestershire sauce is left out by
braggarts who aver that they can take it or leave it. And, in these
degenerate days, when it comes to substitutions for the original beer
or stale pale ale, we find the gratings of great Cheddars wet down
with mere California sherry or even ginger ale--yet so far, thank
goodness, no Cokes. And there's tomato juice out of a can into the Rum
Turn Tiddy, and sometimes celery soup in place of milk or cream.
In view of all this, we can only look to the standard cookbooks for
salvation. These are mostly compiled by women, our thoughtful mothers,
wives and sweethearts who have saved the twin Basic Rabbits for us. If
it weren't for these Fanny Farmers, the making of a real aboriginal
Welsh Rabbit would be a lost art--lost in sporting male attempts to
improve upon the original.
The girls are still polite about the whole thing and protectively
pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their
culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high
society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's
dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a
lot to be said for this more genteel and appetizing rendering of the
word, for the Welsh masterpiece is, after all, a very rare bit of
cheesemongery, male or female.
Yet in dealing with "Rarebits" the distaff side seldom sets down more
than the basic Adam and Eve in a whole Paradise of Rabbits: No. 1,
the wild male type made with beer, and No. 2, the mild female made
with milk. Yet now that the chafing dish has come back to stay,
there's a flurry in the Rabbit warren and the new cooking
encyclopedias give up to a dozen variants. Actually there are easily
half a gross of valid ones in current esteem.
The two basic recipes are differentiated by the liquid ingredient, but
both the beer and the milk are used only one way--warm, or anyway at
room temperature. And again for the two, there is but one traditional
cheese--Cheddar, ripe, old or merely aged from six months onward. This
is also called American, store, sharp, Rabbit, yellow, beer, Wisconsin
Longhorn, mouse, and even rat.
The seasoned, sapid Cheddar-type, so indispensable, includes dozens of
varieties under different names, regional or commercial. These are
easily identified as sisters-under-the-rinds by all five senses:
sight: Golden yellow and mellow to the eye. It's one of those
round cheeses that also tastes round in the mouth.
hearing: By thumping, a cheese-fancier, like a melon-picker,
can tell if a Cheddar is rich, ripe and ready for the Rabbit.
When you hear your dealer say, "It's six months old or more,"
enough said.
smell: A scent as fresh as that of the daisies and herbs the
mother milk cow munched "will hang round it still." Also a slight
beery savor.
touch: Crumbly--a caress to the fingers.
taste: The quintessence of this fivefold test. Just cuddle a
crumb with your tongue and if it tickles the taste buds it's
prime. When it melts in your mouth, that's proof it will melt in
the pan.
Beyond all this (and in spite of the school that plumps for the No. 2
temperance alternative) we must point out that beer has a special
affinity for Cheddar. The French have clearly established this in
their names for Welsh Rabbit, _Fromage Fondue à la Bière_ and _Fondue
à l'Anglaise_.
To prepare such a cheese for the pan, each Rabbit hound may have a
preference all his own, for here the question comes up of how it melts
best. Do you shave, slice, dice, shred, mince, chop, cut, scrape or
crumble it in the fingers? This will vary according to one's
temperament and the condition of the cheese. Generally, for best
results it is coarsely grated. When it comes to making all this into a
rare bit of Rabbit there is:
The One and Only Method
Use a double boiler, or preferably a chafing dish, avoiding aluminum
and other soft metals. Heat the upper pan by simmering water in the
lower one, but don't let the water boil up or touch the top pan.
Most, but not all, Rabbits are begun by heating a bit of butter or
margarine in the pan in which one cup of roughly grated cheese,
usually sharp Cheddar, is melted and mixed with one-half cup of
liquid, added gradually. (The butter isn't necessary for a cheese that
should melt by itself.)
The two principal ingredients are melted smoothly together and kept
from curdling by stirring steadily in one direction only, over an even
heat. The spoon used should be of hard wood, sterling silver or
porcelain. Never use tin, aluminum or soft metal--the taste may come
off to taint the job.
Be sure the liquid is at room temperature, or warmer, and add it
gradually, without interrupting the stirring. Do not let it come to
the bubbling point, and never let it boil.
Add seasonings only when the cheese is melted, which will take two or
three minutes. Then continue to stir in the same direction without an
instant's letup, for maybe ten minutes or more, until the Rabbit is
smooth. The consistency and velvety smoothness depend a good deal on
whether or not an egg, or a beaten yolk, is added.
The hotter the Rabbit is served, the better. You can sizzle the top
with a salamander or other branding iron, but in any case set it forth
as nearly sizzling as possible, on toast hellishly hot, whether it's
browned or buttered on one side or both.
Give a thought to the sad case of the "little dog whose name was
Rover, and when he was dead he was dead all over." Something very
similar happens with a Rabbit that's allowed to cool down--when it's
cold it's cold all over, and you can't resuscitate it by heating.
BASIC WELSH RABBIT
No. 1 (with beer)
2 tablespoons butter
3 cups grated old Cheddar
1/2 teaspoon English dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
A dash of cayenne
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten with
1/2 cup light beer or ale
4 slices hot buttered toast
Over boiling water melt butter and cheese together, stirring
steadily with a wooden (or other tasteless) spoon in one
direction only. Add seasonings and do not interrupt your rhythmic
stirring, as you pour in a bit at a time of the beer-and-egg
mixture until it's all used up.
It may take many minutes of constant stirring to achieve the
essential creamy thickness and then some more to slick it out as
smooth as velvet.
Keep it piping hot but don't let it bubble, for a boiled Rabbit
is a spoiled Rabbit. Only unremitting stirring (and the best of
cheese) will keep it from curdling, getting stringy or rubbery.
Pour the Rabbit generously over crisp, freshly buttered toast
and serve instantly on hot plates.
Usually crusts are cut off the bread before toasting, and some
aesthetes toast one side only, spreading the toasted side with cold
butter for taste contrast. Lay the toast on the hot plate, buttered
side down, and pour the Rabbit over the porous untoasted side so it
can soak in. (This is recommended in Lady Llanover's recipe, which
appears on page 52 of this book.)
Although the original bread for Rabbit toast was white, there is now
no limit in choice among whole wheat, graham, rolls, muffins, buns,
croutons and crackers, to infinity.
No. 2 (with milk)
For a rich milk Rabbit use 1/2 cup thin cream, evaporated milk,
whole milk or buttermilk, instead of beer as in No. 1. Then, to
keep everything bland, cut down the mustard by half or leave
it out, and use paprika in place of cayenne. As in No. 1, the
use of Worcestershire sauce is optional, although our feeling is
that any spirited Rabbit would resent its being left out.
Either of these basic recipes can be made without eggs, and more
cheaply, although the beaten egg is a guarantee against stringiness.
When the egg is missing, we are sad to record that a teaspoon or so of
cornstarch generally takes its place.
Rabbiteers are of two minds about fast and slow heating and stirring,
so you'll have to adjust that to your own experience and rhythm. As a
rule, the heat is reduced when the cheese is almost melted, and speed
of stirring slows when the eggs and last ingredients go in.
Many moderns who have found that monosodium glutamate steps up the
flavor of natural cheese, put it in at the start, using one-half
teaspoon for each cup of grated Cheddar. When it comes to pepper you
are fancy-free. As both black and white pepper are now held in almost
equal esteem, you might equip your hutch with twin hand-mills to do
the grinding fresh, for this is always worth the trouble. Tabasco
sauce is little used and needs a cautious hand, but some addicts can't
leave it out any more than they can swear off the Worcestershire.
The school that plumps for malty Rabbits and the other that goes for
milky ones are equally emphatic in their choice. So let us consider
the compromise of our old friend Frederick Philip Stieff, the
Baltimore _homme de bouche_, as he set it forth for us years ago in
_10,000 Snacks_: "The idea of cooking a Rabbit with beer is an
exploded and dangerous theory. Tap your keg or open your case of ale
or beer and serve _with_, not in your Rabbit."
The Stieff Recipe BASIC MILK RABBIT (_completely
surrounded by a lake of malt beverages_)
2 cups grated sharp cheese
3 heaping tablespoons butter
1-1/2 cups milk
4 eggs
1 heaping tablespoon mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Pepper, salt and paprika to taste--then add more of each.
Grease well with butter the interior of your double boiler so
that no hard particles of cheese will form in the mixture later
and contribute undesirable lumps.
Put cheese, well-grated, into the double boiler and add butter
and milk. From this point vigorous stirring should be indulged in
until Rabbit is ready for serving.
Prepare a mixture of Worcestershire sauce, mustard, pepper, salt
and paprika. These should be beaten until light and then slowly
poured into the double boiler. Nothing now remains to be done
except to stir and cook down to proper consistency over a fairly
slow flame. The finale has not arrived until you can drip the
rabbit from the spoon and spell the word _finis_ on the surface.
Pour over two pieces of toast per plate and send anyone home who
does not attack it at once.
This is sufficient for six gourmets or four gourmands.
_Nota bene_: A Welsh Rabbit, to be a success, should never be of the
consistency whereby it may be used to tie up bundles, nor yet should
it bounce if inadvertently dropped on the kitchen floor.
Lady Llanover's Toasted Welsh Rabbit
Cut a slice of the real Welsh cheese made of sheep's and cow's
milk; toast it at the fire on both sides, but not so much as to
drop (melt). Toast on one side a piece of bread less than 1/4
inch thick, to be quite crisp, and spread it very thinly with
fresh, cold butter on the toasted side. (It must not be
saturated.) Lay the toasted cheese upon the untoasted bread side
and serve immediately on a very hot plate. The butter on the
toast can, of course, be omitted. (It is more frequently eaten
without butter.)
From this original toasting of the cheese many Englishmen still call
Welsh Rabbit "Toasted Cheese," but Lady Llanover goes on to point out
that the Toasted Rabbit of her Wales and the Melted or Stewed Buck
Rabbit of England (which has become our American standard) are as
different in the making as the regional cheeses used in them, and she
says that while doctors prescribed the toasted Welsh as salubrious for
invalids, the stewed cheese of Olde England was "only adapted to
strong digestions."
English literature rings with praise for the toasted cheese of Wales
and England. There is Christopher North's eloquent "threads of
unbeaten gold, shining like gossamer filaments (that may be pulled
from its tough and tenacious substance)."
Yet not all of the references are complimentary.
Thus Shakespeare in _King Lear_:
Look, look a mouse!
Peace, peace;--this piece of toasted cheese will do it.
And Sydney Smith's:
Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted
meat has led to suicide.
But Rhys Davis in _My Wales_ makes up for such rudenesses:
_The Welsh Enter Heaven_
The Lord had been complaining to St. Peter of the dearth of good
singers in Heaven. "Yet," He said testily, "I hear excellent
singing outside the walls. Why are not those singers here with
me?"
St. Peter said, "They are the Welsh. They refuse to come in; they
say they are happy enough outside, playing with a ball and boxing
and singing such songs as '_Suspan Fach_.'"
The Lord said, "I wish them to come in here to sing Bach and
Mendelssohn. See that they are in before sundown."
St. Peter went to the Welsh and gave them the commands of the
Lord. But still they shook their heads. Harassed, St. Peter went
to consult with St. David, who, with a smile, was reading the
works of Caradoc Evans.
St. David said, "Try toasted cheese. Build a fire just inside the
gates and get a few angels to toast cheese in front of it" This
St. Peter did. The heavenly aroma of the sizzling, browning
cheese was wafted over the walls and, with loud shouts, a great
concourse of the Welsh came sprinting in. When sufficient were
inside to make up a male voice choir of a hundred, St Peter
slammed the gates. However, it is said that these are the only
Welsh in Heaven.
And, lest we forget, the wonderful drink that made Alice grow and grow
to the ceiling of Wonderland contained not only strawberry jam but
toasted cheese.
Then there's the frightening nursery rhyme:
The Irishman loved usquebaugh,
The Scot loved ale called Bluecap.
The Welshman, he loved toasted cheese,
And made his mouth like a mousetrap.
The Irishman was drowned in usquebaugh,
The Scot was drowned in ale,
The Welshman he near swallowed a mouse
But he pulled it out by the tail.
And, perhaps worst of all, Shakespeare, no cheese-lover, this tune in
_Merry Wives of Windsor_:
'Tis time I were choked by a bit of toasted cheese.
An elaboration of the simple Welsh original went English with Dr.
William Maginn, the London journalist whose facile pen enlivened the
_Blackwoods Magazine_ era with _Ten Tales_:
[Illustration] Dr. Maginn's Rabbit
Much is to be said in favor of toasted cheese for supper. It is
the cant to say that Welsh rabbit is heavy eating. I like it best
in the genuine Welsh way, however--that is, the toasted bread
buttered on both sides profusely, then a layer of cold roast beef
with mustard and horseradish, and then, on the top of all, the
superstratum, of Cheshire _thoroughly_ saturated, while, in the
process of toasting, with genuine porter, black pepper, and
shallot vinegar. I peril myself upon the assertion that this is
not a heavy supper for a man who has been busy all day till
dinner in reading, writing, walking or riding--who has occupied
himself between dinner and supper in the discussion of a bottle
or two of sound wine, or any equivalent--and who proposes to
swallow at least three tumblers of something hot ere he resigns
himself to the embrace of Somnus. With these provisos, I
recommend toasted cheese for supper.
The popularity of this has come down to us in the succinct
summing-up, "Toasted cheese hath no master."
The Welsh original became simple after Dr. Maginn's supper sandwich
was served, a century and a half ago; for it was served as a savory to
sum up and help digest a dinner, in this form:
After-Dinner Rabbit
Remove all crusts from bread slices, toast on both sides and soak
to saturation in hot beer. Melt thin slices of sharp old cheese
in butter in an iron skillet, with an added spot of beer and dry
English mustard. Stir steadily with a wooden spoon and, when
velvety, serve a-sizzle on piping hot beer-soaked toast.
While toasted cheese undoubtedly was the Number One dairy dish of
Anglo-Saxons, stewed cheese came along to rival it in Elizabethan
London. This sophisticated, big-city dish, also called a Buck Rabbit,
was the making of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, where Dr.
Johnson later presided. And it must have been the pick of the town
back in the days when barrooms still had sawdust on the floor, for the
learned Doctor endorsed old Omar Khayyam's love of the pub with:
"There is nothing which has been contrived by man by which so much
happiness is produced as by a good tavern." Yet he was no gourmet, as
may be judged by his likening of a succulent, golden-fried oyster to
"a baby's ear dropped in sawdust."
Perhaps it is just as well that no description of the world's first
Golden Buck has come down from him. But we don't have to look far for
on-the-spot pen pictures by other men of letters at "The Cheese," as
it was affectionately called. To a man they sang praises for that
piping hot dish of preserved and beatified milk.
Inspired by stewed cheese, Mark Lemon, the leading rhymester of
_Punch_, wrote the following poem and dedicated it to the memory of
Lovelace:
Champagne will not a dinner make,
Nor caviar a meal
Men gluttonous and rich may take
Those till they make them ill
If I've potatoes to my chop,
And after chop have cheese,
Angels in Pond and Spiers's shop
Know no such luxuries.
All that's necessary is an old-time "cheese stewer" or a reasonable
substitute. The base of this is what was once quaintly called a
"hot-water bath." This was a sort of miniature wash boiler just big
enough to fit in snugly half a dozen individual tins, made squarish
and standing high enough above the bath water to keep any of it from
getting into the stew. In these tins the cheese is melted. But since
such a tinsmith's contraption is hard to come by in these days of
fireproof cooking glass, we suggest muffin tins, ramekins or even
small cups to crowd into the bottom of your double boiler or chafing
dish. But beyond this we plump for a revival of the "cheese stewer" in
stainless steel, silver or glass.
In the ritual at "The Cheese," these dishes, brimming over, "bubbling
and blistering with the stew," followed a pudding that's still famous.
Although down the centuries the recipe has been kept secret, the
identifiable ingredients have been itemized as follows: "Tender steak,
savory oyster, seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent
pepper and delicate paste"--not to mention mushrooms. And after the
second or third helping of pudding, with a pint of stout, bitter, or
the mildest and mellowest brown October Ale in a dented pewter pot,
"the stewed Cheshire cheese."
Cheese was the one and only other course prescribed by tradition and
appetite from the time when Charles II aled and regaled Nell Gwyn at
"The Cheese," where Shakespeare is said to have sampled this "kind of
a glorified Welsh Rarebit, served piping hot in the square shallow
tins in which it is cooked and garnished with sippets of delicately
colored toast."
Among early records is this report of Addison's in _The Spectator_ of
September 25,1711:
They yawn for a Cheshire cheese, and begin about midnight, when
the whole company is disposed to be drowsy. He that yawns widest,
and at the same time so naturally as to produce the most yawns
amongst his spectators, carries home the cheese.
Only a short time later, in 1725, the proprietor of Simpson's in the
Strand inaugurated a daily guessing contest that drew crowds to his
fashionable eating and drinking place. He would set forth a huge
portion of cheese and wager champagne and cigars for the house that no
one present could correctly estimate the weight, height and girth of
it.
As late as 1795, when Boswell was accompanying Dr. Johnson to "The
Cheese," records of St. Dunstan's Club, which also met there, showed
that the current price of a Buck Rabbit was tuppence, and that this
was also the amount of the usual tip.
Ye Original Recipe
1-1/2 ounces butter
1 cup cream
1-1/2 cups grated Cheshire cheese (more pungent, snappier, richer,
and more brightly colored than its first cousin, Cheddar)
Heat butter and cream together, then stir in the cheese and let
it stew.
You dunk fingers of toast directly into your individual tin, or
pour the Stewed Rabbit over toast and brown the top under a
blistering salamander.
The salamander is worth modernizing, too, so you can brand your
own Rabbits with your monogram or the design of your own
Rabbitry. Such a branding iron might be square, like the stew
tin, and about the size of a piece of toast.
It is notable that there is no beer or ale in this recipe, but not
lamentable, since all aboriginal cheese toasts were washed down in
tossing seas of ale, beer, porter, stout, and 'arf and 'arf.
This creamy Stewed Buck, on which the literary greats of Johnson's
time supped while they smoked their church wardens, received its
highest praise from an American newspaper woman who rhapsodized in
1891: "Then came stewed cheese, on the thin shaving of crisp, golden
toast in hot silver saucers--so hot that the cheese was the substance
of thick cream, the flavor of purple pansies and red raspberries
commingled."
This may seem a bit flowery, but in truth many fine cheeses hold a
trace of the bouquet of the flowers that have enriched the milk.
Alpine blooms and herbs haunt the Gruyère, Parmesan wafts the scent of
Parma violets, the Flower Cheese of England is perfumed with the
petals of rose, violet, marigold and jasmine.
Oven Rabbit (FROM AN OLD RECIPE)
Chop small 1/2 pound of cooking cheese. Put it, with a piece of
butter the size of a walnut, in a little saucepan, and as the
butter melts and the cheese gets warm, mash them together,
When softened add 2 yolks of eggs, 1/2 teacupful of ale, a little
cayenne pepper and salt. Stir with a wooden spoon one way only,
until it is creamy, but do not let it boil, for that would spoil
it. Place some slices of buttered toast on a dish, pour the
Rarebit upon them, and set inside-the oven about 2 minutes before
serving.
Yorkshire Rabbit _(originally called Gherkin Buck,
from a pioneer recipe_)
Put into a saucepan 1/2 pound of cheese, sprinkle with pepper
(black, of course) to taste, pour over 1/2 teacup of ale, and
convert the whole into a smooth, creamy mass, over the fire,
stirring continually, for about 10 minutes.
In 2 more minutes it should be done. (10 minutes altogether is
the minimum.) Pour it over slices of hot toast, place a piece of
broiled bacon on the top of each and serve as hot as possible.
Golden Buck
A Golden Buck is simply the Basic Welsh Rabbit with beer (No. 1)
plus a poached egg on top. The egg, sunny side up, gave it its
shining name a couple of centuries ago. Nowadays some chafing
dish show-offs try to gild the Golden Buck with dashes of ginger
and spice.
Golden Buck II
This is only a Golden Buck with the addition of bacon strips.
The Venerable Yorkshire Buck
Spread 1/2-inch slices of bread with mustard and brown in hot
oven. Then moisten each slice with 1/2 glass of ale, lay on top a
slice of cheese 1/4-inch thick, and 2 slices of bacon on top of
that. Put back in oven, cook till cheese is melted and the bacon
crisp, and serve piping hot, with tankards of cold ale.
Bacon is the thing that identifies any Yorkshire Rabbit.
Yale College Welsh Rabbit (MORIARTY'S)
1 jigger of beer
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon mustard
1-1/2 cups grated or shaved cheese
More beer
Pour the jigger of beer into "a low saucepan," dash on the
seasonings, add the cheese and stir unremittingly, moistening
from time to time with more beer, a pony or two at a time.
When creamy, pour over buttered toast (2 slices for this amount)
and serve with still more beer.
There are two schools of postgraduate Rabbit-hunters: Yale, as above,
with beer both in the Rabbit and with it; and the other featured in
the Stieff Recipe, which prefers leaving it out of the Rabbit, but
taps a keg to drink with it.
The ancient age of Moriarty's campus classic is registered by the use
of pioneer black pepper in place of white, which is often used today
and is thought more sophisticated by some than the red cayenne of
Rector's Naughty Nineties Chafing Dish Rabbit, which is precisely the
same as our Basic Recipe No. 1.
Border-hopping Bunny, or Frijole Rabbit
1-1/2 tablespoons butter
1-1/2 tablespoons chopped onion
2 tablespoons chopped pepper, green or red, or both
1-1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 small can kidney beans, drained
1-1/2 tablespoons catsup
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire
Salt
2 cups grated cheese
Cook onion and pepper lightly in butter with chili powder; add
kidney beans and seasonings and stir in the cheese until melted.
Serve this beany Bunny peppery hot on tortillas or crackers,
toasted and buttered.
In the whole hutch of kitchen Rabbitry the most popular modern ones
are made with tomato, a little or lots. They hop in from everywhere,
from Mexico to South Africa, and call for all kinds of quirks, down to
mixing in some dried beef, and there is even a skimpy Tomato Rabbit
for reducers, made with farmer cheese and skimmed milk.
Although the quaintly named Rum Tum Tiddy was doubtless the
great-grandpappy of all Tomato Rabbits, a richer, more buttery and
more eggy one has taken its place as the standard today. The following
is a typical recipe for this, tried and true, since it has had a
successful run through a score of the best modern cookbooks, with only
slight personal changes to keep its juice a-flowing blood-red.
Tomato Rabbit
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup thin cream or evaporated milk
3/4 cup canned tomato pulp, rubbed through a sieve to remove seeds
A pinch of soda
3 cups grated cheese
Pinches of dry mustard, salt and cayenne
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Blend flour in melted butter, add cream slowly, and when this
white sauce is a little thick, stir in tomato sprinkled with
soda. Keep stirring steadily while adding cheese and seasonings,
and when cooked enough, stir in the eggs to make a creamy
texture, smooth as silk. Serve on buttered whole wheat or graham
bread for a change.
Instead of soda, some antiquated recipes call for "a tablespoon of
bicarbonate of potash."
South African Tomato Rabbit
This is the same as above, except that 1/2 teaspoon of sugar is
used in place of the soda and the Rabbit is poured over baked
pastry cut into squares and sprinkled with parsley, chopped fine,
put in the oven and served immediately.
Rum Tum Tiddy, Rink Tum Ditty, etc. (OLD BOSTON
STYLE)
1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 big pinch of pepper
2 cups cooked tomatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
3 cups grated store cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
Slowly fry onion bright golden in butter, season and add tomatoes
with sugar. Heat just under the bubbling point. Don't let it
boil, but keep adding cheese and shaking the pan until it melts.
Then stir in egg gently and serve very hot
Tomato Soup Rabbit
1 can condensed tomato soup
2 cups grated cheese
1/4 teaspoon English mustard
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt and pepper
Heat soup, stir in cheese until melted, add mustard and egg
slowly, season and serve hot.
This is a quickie Rum Tum Tiddy, without any onion, a poor,
housebroken version of the original. It can be called a Celery Rabbit
if you use a can of celery soup in place of the tomato.
Onion Rum Tum Tiddy
Prepare as in Rum Tum Tiddy, but use only 1-1/2 cups cooked
tomatoes and add 1/2 cup of mashed boiled onions.
Sherry Rum Tum Tiddy
1 tablespoon butter
1 small onion, minced
1 small green pepper, minced
1 can tomato soup
3/4 cup milk
3 cups grated cheese
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 jigger sherry
Crackers
Prepare as in Rum Tum Tiddy. Stir in sherry last to retain its
flavor. Crumble crackers into a hot tureen until it's about 1/3
full and pour the hot Rum Tum Tiddy over them.
Blushing Bunny
This is a sister-under-the-skin to the old-fashioned Rum Tum
Tiddy, except that her complexion is made a little rosier with a
lot of paprika in place of plain pepper, and the paprika cooked
in from the start, of course.
Blushing Bunny is one of those playful English names for dishes, like
Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak
_(Bubblum Squeakum_), and Toad in the Hole.
Scotch Woodcock
Another variant of Rum Tum Tiddy. Make your Rum Tum Tiddy, but
before finishing up with the beaten egg, stir in 2 heaping
tablespoons of anchovy paste and prepare the buttered toast by
laying on slices of hard-cooked eggs.
American Woodchuck
1-1/2 cups tomato purée
2 cups grated cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
Cayenne
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Salt and pepper
Heat the tomato and stir in the cheese. When partly melted stir
in the egg and, when almost cooked, add seasonings without ever
interrupting the stirring. Pour over hot toasted crackers or
bread.
No doubt this all-American Tomato Rabbit with brown sugar was named
after the native woodchuck, in playful imitation of the Scotch
Woodcock above. It's the only Rabbit we know that's sweetened with
brown sugar.
Running Rabbit (_as served at the Waldorf-Astoria,
First Annual Cheeselers Field Day, November 12,1937_)
Cut finest old American cheese in very small pieces and melt in
saucepan with a little good beer. Season and add Worcestershire
sauce. Serve instantly with freshly made toast.
This running cony can be poured over toast like any other Rabbit, or
over crushed crackers in a hot tureen, as in Sherry Rum Tum Tiddy, or
served like Fondue, in the original cooking bowl or pan, with the
spoon kept moving in it in one direction only and the Rabbit following
the spoon, like a greyhound following the stuffed rabbit at the dog
races.
Mexican Chilaly
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons chopped green pepper 1-1/2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 cup chopped and drained canned tomatoes, without seeds
2-1/2 cups grated cheese
3/4 teaspoon salt
Dash of cayenne
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons canned tomato juice
Water cress
Cook pepper and onion lightly in butter, add tomato pulp and cook
5 minutes before putting over boiling water and stirring steadily
as you add cheese and seasonings. Moisten the egg with the tomato
juice and stir in until the Rabbit is thick and velvety.
Serve on toast and dress with water cress.
This popular modern Rabbit seems to be a twin to Rum Tum Tiddy in
spite of the centuries' difference in age.
Fluffy, Eggy Rabbit
Stir up a Chilaly as above, but use 2 well-beaten eggs to make it
more fluffy, and leave out the watercress. Serve it hot over cold
slices of hard-cooked eggs crowded flat on hot buttered toast, to
make it extra eggy.
Grilled Tomato Rabbit
Slice big, red, juicy tomatoes 1/2-inch thick, season with salt,
pepper and plenty of brown sugar. Dot both sides with all the
butter that won't slip off.
Heat in moderate oven, and when almost cooked, remove and broil
on both sides. Put on hot plates in place of the usual toast and
pour the Rabbit over them. (The Rabbit is made according to
either Basic Recipe No. 1 or No. 2.)
Slices of crisp bacon on top of the tomato slices and a touch of
horseradish help.
Grilled Tomato and Onion Rabbit
Slice 1/4-inch thick an equal number of tomato and onion rings.
Season with salt, pepper, brown sugar and dots of butter. Heat in
moderate oven, and when almost cooked remove and broil lightly.
On hot plates lay first the onion rings, top with the tomato ones
and pour the Rabbit over, as in the plain Grilled Tomato recipe
above.
For another onion-flavored Rabbit see Celery and Onion Rabbit.
The Devil's Own (_a fresh tomato variant_)
2 tablespoons butter
1 large peeled tomato in 4 thick slices
2-1/2 cups grated cheese
1/4 teaspoon English mustard
A pinch of cayenne
A dash of tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons chili sauce
1/2 cup ale or beer
1 egg, lightly beaten
Sauté tomato slices lightly on both sides in 1 tablespoon butter.
Keep warm on hot platter while you make the toast and a Basic
Rabbit, pepped up by the extra-hot seasonings listed above. Put
hot tomato slices on hot toast on hot plates; pour the hot
mixture over.
Dried Beef or Chipped Beef Rabbit
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup canned tomato, drained, chopped and de-seeded
1/4 pound dried beef, shredded
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cups grated cheese
Heat tomato in butter, add beef and eggs, stir until mixed well,
then sprinkle with pepper, stir in the grated cheese until smooth
and creamy. Serve on toast.
No salt is needed on this jerked steer meat that is called both dried
beef and chipped beef on this side of the border, _tasajo_ on the
other side, and _xarque_ when you get all the way down to Brazil.
Kansas Jack Rabbit
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups grated cheese
1 cup cream-style corn
Salt and pepper
Make a white sauce of milk, butter and flour and stir in cheese
steadily and gradually until melted. Add corn and season to
taste. Serve on hot buttered toast.
Kansas has plenty of the makings for this, yet the dish must have been
easier to make on Baron Münchhausen's "Island of Cheese," where the
cornstalks produced loaves of bread, ready-made, instead of ears, and
were no doubt crossed with long-eared jacks to produce Corn Rabbits
quite as miraculous.
After tomatoes, in popularity, come onions and then green peppers or
canned pimientos as vegetable ingredients in modern, Americanized
Rabbits. And after that, corn, as in the following recipe which
appeals to all Latin-Americans from Mexico to Chile because it has
everything.
Latin-American Corn Rabbit
2 tablespoons butter
1 green pepper, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 cup condensed tomato soup
3 cups grated cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cup canned corn
1 egg, lightly beaten
Fry pepper and onion 5 minutes in butter; add soup, cover and
cook 5 minutes more. Put over boiling water; add cheese with
seasonings and stir steadily, slowly adding the corn, and when
thoroughly blended and creamy, moisten the egg with a little of
the liquid, stir in until thickened and then pour over hot toast
or crackers.
Mushroom-Tomato Rabbit
In one pan commence frying in butter 1 cup of sliced fresh
mushrooms, and in another make a Rabbit by melting over boiling
water 2 cups of grated cheese with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2
teaspoon paprika. Stir steadily and, when partially melted, stir
in a can of condensed tomato soup, previously heated. Then add
the fried mushrooms slowly, stir until creamy and pour over hot
toast or crackers.
Celery and Onion Rabbit
1/2 cup chopped hearts of celery
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1-1/2 cups grated sharp cheese
Salt and pepper
In a separate pan boil celery and onion until tender. Meanwhile,
melt cheese with butter and seasonings and stir steadily. When
nearly done stir the celery and onion in gradually, until smooth
and creamy.
Pour over buttered toast and brown with a salamander or under the
grill.
Asparagus Rabbit
Make as above, substituting a cupful of tender sliced asparagus
tops for the celery and onion.
Oyster Rabbit
2 dozen oysters and their liquor
1 teaspoon butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 large pinch of salt
1 small pinch of cayenne
3 cups grated cheese
Heat oysters until edges curl and put aside to keep warm while
you proceed to stir up a Rabbit. When cheese is melted add the
eggs with some of the oyster liquor and keep stirring. When the
Rabbit has thickened to a smooth cream, drop in the warm oysters
to heat a little more, and serve on hot buttered toast.
Sea-food Rabbits
_(crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops, clams, mussels, abalone,
squid, octopi; anything that swims in the sea or crawls on the
bottom of the ocean)_
Shred, flake or mince a cupful of any freshly cooked or canned
sea food and save some of the liquor, if any. Make according to
Oyster Rabbit recipe above.
Instead of using only one kind of sea food, try several, mixed
according to taste. Spike this succulent Sea Rabbit with
horseradish or a dollop of sherry, for a change.
"Bouquet of the Sea" Rabbit
The seafaring Portuguese set the style for this lush bouquet of
as many different kinds of cooked fish (tuna, cod, salmon, etc.)
as can be sardined together in the whirlpool of melted cheese in
the chafing dish. They also accent it with tidbits of sea food as
above.
Other Fish Rabbit, Fresh or Dried
Any cooked fresh fish, flaked or shredded, from the alewife to
the whale, or cooked dried herring, finnan haddie, mackerel, cod,
and so on, can be stirred in to make a basic Rabbit more tasty.
Happy combinations are hit upon in mixing leftovers of several
kinds by the cupful. So the odd old cookbook direction, "Add a
cup of fish," takes on new meaning.
Grilled Sardine Rabbit
Make a Basic Rabbit and pour it over sardines, skinned, boned,
halved and grilled, on buttered toast.
Similarly cooked fillets of any small fish will make as succulent
a grilled Rabbit.
Roe Rabbits
Slice cooked roe of shad or toothsome eggs of other fish, grill
on toast, butter well and pour a Basic Rabbit over. Although shad
roe is esteemed the finest, there are many other sapid ones of
salmon, herring, flounder, cod, etc.
Plain Sardine Rabbit
Make Basic Rabbit with only 2 cups of cheese, and in place of the
egg yolks and beer, stir in a large tin of sardines, skinned,
boned and flaked.
Anchovy Rabbit
Make Basic Rabbit, add 1 tablespoon of imported East Indian
chutney with the egg yolks and beer at the finish, spread toast
thickly with anchovy paste and butter, and pour the Rabbit over.
Smoked sturgeon, whiting, eel, smoked salmon, and the like
Lay cold slices or flakes of any fine smoked fish (and all of
them are fine) on hot buttered toast and pour a Basic Rabbit over
the fish.
The best combination we ever tasted is made by laying a thin
slice of smoked salmon over a thick one of smoked sturgeon.
Smoked Cheddar Rabbit
With or without smoked fish, Rabbit-hunters whose palates crave
the savor of a wisp of smoke go for a Basic Rabbit made with
smoked Cheddar in place of the usual aged, but unsmoked, Cheddar.
We use a two-year-old that Phil Alpert, Mr. Cheese himself,
brings down from Canada and has specially smoked in the same
savory room where sturgeon is getting the works. So his Cheddar
absorbs the de luxe flavor of six-dollar-per-pound sturgeon and
is sold for a fraction of that.
And just in case you are fishing around for something extra
special, serve this smoky Rabbit on oven-browned Bombay ducks,
those crunchy flat toasts of East Indian fish.
Or go Oriental by accompanying this with cups of smoky Lapsang
Soochong China tea.
Crumby Rabbit
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups grated cheese
1 cup stale bread crumbs
soaked with
1 cup milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt
Cayenne
Toasted crackers
Melt cheese in butter, stir in the soaked crumbs and seasonings.
When cooked smooth and creamy, stir in the egg to thicken the
mixture and serve on toasted crackers, dry or buttered, for
contrast with the bread.
Some Rabbiteers monkey with this, lacing it with half a cup of
catsup, making a sort of pink baboon out of what should be a
white monkey.
There is a cult for Crumby Rabbits variations on which extend all
the way to a deep casserole dish called Baked Rabbit and
consisting of alternate layers of stale bread crumbs and
grated-cheese crumbs. This illegitimate three-layer Rabbit is
moistened with eggs beaten up with milk, and seasoned with salt
and paprika.
Crumby Tomato Rabbit
2 teaspoons butter
2 cups grated cheese
1/2 cup soft bread crumbs
1 cup tomato soup
Salt and pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
Melt cheese in butter, moisten bread crumbs with the tomato soup
and stir in; season, add egg and keep stirring until velvety.
Serve on toasted crackers, as a contrast to the bread crumbs.
Gherkin or Irish Rabbit
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups grated cheese
1/2 cup milk (or beer)
A dash of vinegar
1/2 teaspoon mustard
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup chopped gherkin pickles
Melt cheese in butter, steadily stir in liquid and seasonings.
Keep stirring until smooth, then add the pickles and serve.
This may have been called Irish after the green of the pickle.
Dutch Rabbit
Melt thin slices of any good cooking cheese in a heavy skillet
with a little butter, prepared mustard, and a splash of beer.
Have ready some slices of toast soaked in hot beer or ale and
pour the Rabbit over them.
The temperance version of this substitutes milk for beer and
delicately soaks the toast in hot water instead.
Proof that there is no Anglo-Saxon influence here lies in the use of
prepared mustard. The English, who still do a lot of things the hard
way, mix their biting dry mustard fresh with water before every meal,
while the Germans and French bottle theirs, as we do.
Pumpernickel Rabbit
This German deviation is made exactly the same as the Dutch
Rabbit above, but its ingredients are the opposite in color.
Black bread (pumpernickel) slices are soaked in heated dark beer
(porter or stout) and the yellow cheese melted in the skillet is
also stirred up with brunette beer.
Since beer is a kind of liquid bread, it is natural for the two to
commingle in Rabbits whether they are blond Dutch or black
pumpernickel. And since cheese is only solid milk, and the Cheddar is
noted for its beery smell, there is further affinity here. An old
English proverb sums it up neatly: "Bread and cheese are the two
targets against death."
By the way, the word pumpernickel is said to have been coined when
Napoleon tasted his first black bread in Germany. Contemptuously he
spat it out with: "This would be good for my horse, Nicole." "_Bon
pour Nicole_" in French.
Gruyère Welsh Rabbit _au gratin_
Cut crusts from a half-dozen slices of bread. Toast them lightly,
lay in a roasting pan and top each with a matching slice of
imported Gruyère 3/8-inch thick. Pepper to taste and cover with
bread crumbs. Put in oven 10 minutes and rush to the ultimate
consumer.
To our American ears anything _au gratin_ suggests "with cheese," so
this Rabbit _au gratin_ may sound redundant. To a Frenchman, however,
it means a dish covered with bread crumbs.
Swiss Cheese Rabbit
1/2 cup white wine, preferably Neufchâtel
1/2 cup grated Gruyère
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 saltspoon paprika
2 egg yolks
Stir wine and seasonings together with the cheese until it melts,
then thicken with the egg yolks, stirring at least 3 more minutes
until smooth.
Sherry Rabbit
3 cups grated cheese
1/2 cup cream or evaporated milk
1/2 cup sherry
1/4 teaspoon English mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
A dash of paprika
Heat cheese over hot water, with or without a bit of butter, and
when it begins to melt, stir in the cream. Keep stirring until
almost all of the cheese is melted, then add sherry. When smooth
and creamy, stir in the mustard and Worcestershire sauce, and
after pouring over buttered toast dash with paprika for color.
Spanish Sherry Rabbit
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 bouillon cube, mashed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups grated cheese
1 jigger sherry
Make a smooth paste of butter, flour, bouillon cube and
seasonings, and add milk slowly. When well-heated stir in the
cheese gradually. Continue stirring at least 10 minutes, and when
well-blended stir in the sherry and serve on hot, buttered toast.
Pink Poodle
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon chopped onion
1 tablespoon flour
1 jigger California claret
1 cup cream of tomato soup
A pinch of soda
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
A dash of powdered cloves
3 cups grated cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
Cook onion in butter until light golden, then blend in flour,
wine and soup with the soda and all seasonings. Stir in cheese
slowly until melted and finish off by thickening with the egg and
stirring until smooth and velvety. Serve on crisp, buttered toast
with a dry red wine.
Although wine Rabbits, red or white, are as unusual as Swiss ones with
Gruyère in place of Cheddar, wine is commonly drunk with anything from
a Golden Buck to a Blushing Bunny. But for most of us, a deep draught
of beer or ale goes best with an even deeper draught of the mellow
scent of a Cheddar golden-yellow.
Savory Eggy Dry Rabbit
1/8 pound butter
2 cups grated Gruyère
4 eggs, well-beaten
Salt
Pepper
Mustard
Melt butter and cheese together with the beaten eggs, stirring
steadily with wooden spoon until soft and smooth. Season and pour
over dry toast.
This "dry" Rabbit, in which the volume of the eggs makes up for any
lacking liquid, is still served as a savory after the sweets to finish
a fine meal in some old-fashioned English homes and hostelries.
Cream Cheese Rabbit
This Rabbit, made with a package of cream cheese, is more
scrambled hen fruit than Rabbit food, for you simply scramble a
half-dozen eggs with butter, milk, salt, pepper and cayenne, and
just before the finish work in the cheese until smooth and serve
on crackers--water crackers for a change.
Reducing Rarebit (Tomato Rarebit)[A]
YIELD: 2 servings. 235 calories per serving.
1/2 pound farmer cheese
2 eggs
1 level tablespoon powdered milk
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon gelatin or agar powder
4 egg tomatoes, quartered, or
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/2 head lettuce and/or 1 cucumber
1/4 cup wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
[Footnote A: (from _The Low-Calory Cookbook_ by Bernard Koten,
published by Random House)]
Fill bottom of double boiler with water to 3/4 mark. Sprinkle
salt in upper part of double boiler. Boil over medium flame. When
upper part is hot, put in cheese, powdered milk, baking powder,
gelatin, caraway seeds and pepper and garlic powder to taste.
Mix. Break eggs into this mixture, cook over low flame,
continually stirring. Add tomatoes when mixture bubbles and
continue cooking and stirring until tomatoes have been cooked
soft. Remove to lettuce and/or cucumber (sliced thin) which has
been slightly marinated in wine vinegar and sprinkle the parsley
flakes over the top of the mixture.
Curry Rabbit
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 cups milk
2-1/2 cups grated cheese
1 tablespoon minced chives
2 green onions, minced
2 shallots, minced
1/4 teaspoon imported curry powder
1 tablespoon chutney sauce
Dissolve cornstarch in a little of the milk and scald the rest
over hot water. Thicken with cornstarch mixture and stir in the
cheese, chives, onions, shallots, curry and chutney while
wooden-spooning steadily until smooth and sizzling enough to pour
over buttered toast.
People who can't let well enough alone put cornstarch in Rabbits, just
as they add soda to spoil the cooking of vegetables.
Ginger Ale Rabbit
Simply substitute ginger ale for the real thing in the No. 1
Rabbit of all time.
Buttermilk Rabbit
Substitute buttermilk for plain milk in the No. 2 Rabbit. To be
consistent, use fresh-cured Buttermilk Cheese, instead of the
usual Cheddar of fresh cow's milk. This is milder.
Eggnog Rabbit
2 tablespoons sweet butter
2 cups grated mellow Cheddar
1-1/3 cups eggnog
Dashes of spice to taste.
After melting the cheese in butter, stir in the eggnog and keep
stirring until smooth and thickened. Season or not, depending on
taste and the quality of eggnog employed.
Ever since the innovation of bottled eggnogs fresh from the milkman in
holiday season, such supremely creamy and flavorful Rabbits have been
multiplying as fast as guinea pigs.
All-American Succotash Rabbit
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
3 cups grated cheese
1 cup creamed succotash, strained
Salt and pepper
Make a white sauce of milk, butter and flour and stir in the
cheese steadily and gradually until melted. Add the creamed
succotash and season to taste.
Serve on toasted, buttered corn bread.
Danish Rabbit
1 quart warm milk
2 cups grated cheese
Stir together to boiling point and pour over piping-hot toast in
heated bowl. This is an esteemed breakfast dish in north Denmark.
As in all Rabbits, more or less cheese may be used, to taste.
Easy English Rabbit
Soak bread slices in hot beer. Melt thin slices of cheese with
butter in iron frying pan, stir in a few spoonfuls of beer and a
bit of prepared mustard. When smoothly melted, pour over the
piping-hot, beer-soaked toast.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Six_
The Fondue
There is a conspiracy among the dictionary makers to take the heart
out of the Fondue. Webster makes it seem no better than a collapsed
soufflé, with his definition:
Fondue. Also, erroneously, _fondu_. A dish made of melted
cheese, butter, eggs, and, often, milk and bread crumbs.
Thorndike-Barnhart further demotes this dish, that for centuries has
been one of the world's greatest, to "a combination of melted cheese,
eggs and butter" and explains that the name comes from the French
_fondre_, meaning melt. The latest snub is delivered by the up-to-date
_Cook's Quiz_ compiled by TV culinary experts:
A baked dish with eggs, cheese, butter, milk and bread crumbs.
A baked dish, indeed! Yet the Fondue has added to the gaiety and
inebriety of nations, if not of dictionaries. It has commanded the
respect of the culinary great. Savarin, Boulestin, André Simon, all
have hailed its heavenly consistency, all have been regaled with its
creamy, nay velvety, smoothness.
A touch of garlic, a dash of kirsch, fresh ground black pepper,
nutmeg, black pearl truffles of Bugey, red cayenne pepper, the
luscious gravy of roast turkey--such little matters help to make an
authentic dunking Fondue, not a baked Fondue, mind you. Jean-Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin a century and a half ago brought the original
"receipt" with him and spread it around with characteristic generosity
during the two years of his exile in New York after the French
Revolution. In his monumental _Physiologie du Goût_ he records an
incident that occurred in 1795:
Whilst passing through Boston ... I taught the restaurant-keeper
Julien to make a _Fondue_, or eggs cooked with cheese. This dish,
a novelty to the Americans, became so much the rage, that he
(Julien) felt himself obliged, by way of thanks, to send me to
New York the rump of one of those pretty little roebucks that are
brought from Canada in winter, and which was declared exquisite
by the chosen committee whom I convoked for the occasion.
As the great French gourmet, Savarin was born on the Swiss border (at
Belley, in the fertile Province of Bugey, where Gertrude Stein later
had a summer home), he no doubt ate Gruyère three times a day, as is
the custom in Switzerland and adjacent parts. He sets down the recipe
just as he got it from its Swiss source, the papers of Monsieur
Trolliet, in the neighboring Canton of Berne:
Take as many eggs as you wish to use, according to the number of
your guests. Then take a lump of good Gruyère cheese, weighing
about a third of the eggs, and a nut of butter about half the
weight of the cheese. (Since today's eggs in America weigh about
1-1/2 ounces apiece, if you start the Fondue with 8. your lump
of good Gruyère would come to 1/4 pound and your butter to 1/8
pound.)
Break and beat the eggs well in a flat pan, then add the butter
and the cheese, grated or cut in small pieces.
Place the pan on a good fire and stir with a wooden spoon until
the mixture is fairly thick and soft; put in a little or no salt,
according to the age of the cheese, and a good deal of pepper,
for this is one of the special attributes of this ancient dish.
Let it be placed on the table in a hot dish, and if some of the
best wines be produced, and the bottle passed quite freely, a
marvelous effect will be beheld.
This has long been quoted as the proper way to make the national dish
of Switzerland. Savarin tells of hearing oldsters in his district
laugh over the Bishop of Belley eating his Fondue with a spoon instead
of the traditional fork, in the first decade of the 1700's. He tells,
too, of a Fondue party he threw for a couple of his septuagenarian
cousins in Paris "about the year 1801."
The party was the result of much friendly taunting of the master: "By
Jove, Jean, you have been bragging for such a long time about your
Fondues, you have continually made our mouths water. It is high time
to put a stop to all this. We will come and breakfast with you some
day and see what sort of thing this dish is."
Savarin invited them for ten o'clock next day, started them off with
the table laid on a "snow white cloth, and in each one's place two
dozen oysters with a bright golden lemon. At each end of the table
stood a bottle of sauterne, carefully wiped, excepting the cork, which
showed distinctly that it had been in the cellar for a long while....
After the oysters, which were quite fresh, came some broiled kidneys,
a _terrine_ of _foie gras_, a pie with truffles, and finally the
Fondue. The different ingredients had all been assembled in a stewpan,
which was placed on the table over a chafing dish, heated with spirits
of wine.
"Then," Savarin is quoted, "I commenced operations on the field of
battle, and my cousins did not lose a single one of my movements.
They were loud in the praise of this preparation, and asked me to let
them have the receipt, which I promised them...."
This Fondue breakfast party that gave the nineteenth century such a
good start was polished off with "fruits in season and sweets, a cup
of genuine mocha ... and finally two sorts of liqueurs, one a spirit
for cleansing, and the other an oil for softening."
This primitive Swiss Cheese Fondue is now prepared more elaborately in
what is called:
Neufchâtel Style
2-1/2 cups grated imported Swiss
1-1/2 tablespoons flour
1 clove of garlic
1 cup dry white wine
Crusty French "flute" or hard rolls cut into big mouthfuls, handy
for dunking
1 jigger kirsch
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg
The cheese should be shredded or grated coarsely and mixed well
with the flour. Use a chafing dish for cooking and a small heated
casserole for serving. Hub the bottom and sides of the blazer
well with garlic, pour in the wine and heat to bubbling, just
under boiling. Add cheese slowly, half a cup at a time, and stir
steadily in one direction only, as in making Welsh Rabbit. Use a
silver fork. Season with very little salt, always depending on
how salty the cheese is, but use plenty of black pepper, freshly
ground, and a touch of nutmeg. Then pour in the kirsch, stir
steadily and invite guests to dunk their forked bread in the dish
or in a smaller preheated casserole over a low electric or
alcohol burner on the dining table. The trick is to keep the
bubbling melted cheese in rhythmic motion with the fork, both up
and down and around and around.
The dunkers stab the hunks of crusty French bread through the soft
part to secure a firm hold in the crust, for if your bread comes off
in dunking you pay a forfeit, often a bottle of wine.
The dunking is done as rhythmically as the stirring, guests taking
regular turns at twirling the fork to keep the cheese swirling. When
this "chafing dish cheese custard," as it has been called in England,
is ready for eating, each in turn thrusts in his fork, sops up a
mouthful with the bread for a sponge and gives the Fondue a final
stir, to keep it always moving in the same direction. All the while
the heat beneath the dish keeps it gently bubbling.
Such a Neufchâtel party was a favorite of King Edward VII, especially
when he was stepping out as the Prince of Wales. He was as fond of
Fondue as most of the great gourmets of his day and preferred it to
Welsh Rabbit, perhaps because of the wine and kirsch that went into
it.
At such a party a little heated wine is added if the Fondue gets too
thick. When finally it has cooked down to a crust in the bottom of the
dish, this is forked out by the host and divided among the guests as a
very special dividend.
Any dry white wine will serve in a pinch, and the Switzerland Cheese
Association, in broadcasting this classical recipe, points out that
any dry rum, slivovitz, or brandy, including applejack, will be a
valid substitute for the kirsch. To us, applejack seems specially
suited, when we stop to consider our native taste that has married
apple pie to cheese since pioneer times.
In culinary usage fondue means "melting to an edible consistency" and
this, of course, doesn't refer to cheese alone, although we use it
chiefly for that.
In France Fondue is also the common name for a simple dish of eggs
scrambled with grated cheese and butter and served very hot on toasted
bread, or filled into fancy paper cases, quickly browned on top and
served at once. The reason for this is that all baked Fondues fall as
easily and as far as Soufflés, although the latter are more noted for
this failing. There is a similarity in the soft fluffiness of both,
although the Fondues are always more moist. For there is a stiff,
stuffed-shirt buildup around any Soufflé, suggesting a dressy dinner,
while Fondue started as a self-service dunking bowl.
Our modern tendency is to try to make over the original French Fondue
on the Welsh Rabbit model--to turn it into a sort of French Rabbit.
Although we know that both Gruyère and Emmentaler are what we call
Swiss and that it is impossible in America to duplicate the rich
Alpine flavor given by the mountain herbs, we are inclined to try all
sorts of domestic cheeses and mixtures thereof. But it's best to stick
to Savarin's "lump of Gruyère" just as the neighboring French and
Italians do. It is interesting to note that this Swiss Alpine cooking
has become so international that it is credited to Italy in the
following description we reprint from _When Madame Cooks_, by an
Englishman, Eric Weir:
Fondue à l'Italienne
This is one of those egg dishes that makes one feel really
grateful to hens. From its name it originated probably in Italy,
but it has crossed the Alps. I have often met it in France, but
only once in Italy.
First of all, make a very stiff white sauce with butter, flour
and milk. The sauce should be stiff enough to allow the wooden
spoon to stand upright or almost.
Off the fire, add yolks of eggs and 4 ounces of grated Gruyère
cheese. Mix this in well with the white sauce and season with
salt, pepper and some grated nutmeg. Beat whites of egg firm. Add
the whites to the preparation, stir in, and pour into a pudding
basin.
Take a large saucepan and fill half full of water. Bring to a
boil, and then place the pudding basin so that the top of the
basin is well out of the water. Allow to boil gently for 1-1/2 to
2 hours. Renew the boiling water from time to time, as it
evaporates, and take care that the water, in boiling, does not
bubble over the mixture.
Test with a knife, as for a cake, to see if it is cooked. When
the knife comes out clean, take the basin out of the water and
turn the Fondue out on a dish. It should be fairly firm and keep
the shape of the basin.
Sprinkle with some finely chopped ham and serve hot.
The imported Swiss sometimes is cubed instead of grated, then
marinated for four or five hours in dry white wine, before being
melted and liquored with the schnapps. This can be pleasantly adopted
here in:
All-American Fondue
1 pound imported Swiss cheese, cubed
3/4 cup scuppernong or other American white wine
1-1/2 jiggers applejack
After marinating the Swiss cubes in the wine, simply melt
together over hot water, stir until soft and creamy, add the
applejack and dunk with fingers of toast or your own to a chorus
of "All Bound Round with a Woolen String."
Of course, this can be treated as a mere vinous Welsh Rabbit and
poured over toast, to be accompanied by beer. But wine is the
thing, for the French Fondue is to dry wine what the Rabbit is to
stale ale or fresh beer.
We say French instead of Swiss because the French took over the dish
so eagerly, together with the great Gruyère that makes it distinctive.
They internationalized it, sent it around the world with bouillabaisse
and onion soup, that celestial _soupe à l'oignon_ on which snowy
showers of grated Gruyère descend.
To put the Welsh Rabbit in its place they called it Fondue à
l'Anglaise, which also points up the twinlike relationship of the
world's two favorite dishes of melted cheese. But to differentiate and
show they are not identical twins, the No. 1 dish remained Fromage
Fondue while the second was baptized Fromage Fondue à la Bière.
Beginning with Savarin the French whisked up more rapturous,
rhapsodic writing about Gruyère and its offspring, the Fondue,
together with the puffed Soufflé, than about any other imported cheese
except Parmesan.
Parmesan and Gruyère were praised as the two greatest culinary
cheeses. A variant Fondue was made of the Italian cheese.
Parmesan Fondue
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt
Pepper
Over boiling water melt butter and cheese slowly, stir in the
eggs, season to taste and stir steadily in one direction only,
until smooth.
Pour over fingers of buttered toast. Or spoon it up, as the
ancients did, before there were any forks. It's beaten with a
fork but eaten catch-as-catch-can, like chicken-in-the-rough.
Sapsago Swiss Fondue
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups milk
2-1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
2-1/2 tablespoons grated Sapsago
1/2 cup dry white wine
Pepper, black and red, freshly ground
Fingers of toast
Over boiling water stir the first four ingredients into a smooth,
fairly thick cream sauce. Then stir in Swiss cheese until well
melted. After that add the Sapsago, finely grated, and wine in
small splashes. Stir steadily, in one direction only, until
velvety. Season sharply with the contrasting peppers and serve
over fingers of toast.
This is also nice when served bubbling in individual, preheated
pastry shells, casseroles or ramekins, although this way most of the
fun of the dunking party is left out. To make up for it, however,
cooked slices of mushrooms are sometimes added.
At the Cheese Cellar in the New York World's Fair Swiss Pavilion,
where a continual dunking party was in progress, thousands of amateurs
learned such basic things as not to overcook the Fondue lest it become
stringy, and the protocol of dunking in turn and keeping the mass in
continual motion until the next on the Fondue line dips in his cube of
bread. The success of the dish depends on making it quickly, keeping
it gently a-bubble and never letting it stand still for a split
second.
The Swiss, who consume three or four times as much cheese per capita
as we, and almost twice as much as the French, are willing to share
Fondue honors with the French Alpine province of Savoy, a natural
cheese cellar with almost two dozen distinctive types of its very own,
such as Fat cheese, also called Death's Head; La Grande Bornand, a
luscious half-dried sheep's milker; Chevrotins, small, dry goat milk
cheeses; and Le Vacherin. The latter, made in both Savoy and
Switzerland, boasts two interesting variants:
1. _Vacherin Fondue or Spiced Fondue:_ Made about the same as
Emmentaler, ripened to sharp age, and then melted, spices added
and the cheese re-formed. It is also called Spiced Fondue and
sells for about two dollars a pound. Named Fondue from being
melted, though it's really recooked,
2. _Vacherin à la Main:_ This is a curiosity in cheeses,
resembling a cold, uncooked Fondue. Made of cow's milk, it is
round, a foot in diameter and half a foot high. It is salted and
aged until the rind is hard and the inside more runny than the
ripest Camembert, so it can be eaten with a spoon (like the
cooked Fondue) as well as spread on bread. The local name for it
is _Tome de Montagne_.
Here is a good assortment of Fondues:
Vacherin-Fribourg Fondue
2 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 cups shredded Vacherin cheese
2 tablespoons hot water
This authentic quickie is started by cooking the garlic in butter
until the butter is melted. Then remove garlic and reduce heat.
Add the soft cheese and stir with silver fork until smooth and
velvety. Add the water in little splashes, stirring constantly in
one direction. Dunk! (In this melted Swiss a little water takes
the place of a lot of wine.)
La Fondue Comtois
This regional specialty of Franche-Comté is made with white wine.
Sauterne, Chablis, Riesling or any Rhenish type will serve
splendidly. Also use butter, grated Gruyère, beaten eggs and that
touch of garlic.
Chives Fondue
3 cups grated Swiss cheese
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
1 garlic clove, crushed
3 tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 cup dry white wine
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
A pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup kirsch
Mix cheese and flour. Melt butter in chafing-dish blazer rubbed
with garlic. Cook chives in butter 1 minute. Add wine and heat
just under boiling. Keep simmering as you add cheese-and-flour
mix gradually, stirring always in one direction. Salt according
to age and sharpness of cheese; add plenty of freshly ground
pepper and the pinch of nutmeg.
When everything is stirred smooth and bubbling, toss in the
kirsch without missing a stroke of the fork and get to dunking.
Large, crisp, hot potato chips make a pleasant change for dunking
purposes. Or try assorted crackers alternating with the absorbent
bread, or hard rolls.
Tomato Fondue
2 tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried sweet basil
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
Paprika
Mix basil with chopped tomatoes. Rub chafing dish with garlic,
melt butter, add tomatoes and much paprika. Cook 5 to 6 minutes,
add wine, stir steadily to boiling point. Then add cheese, half a
cup at a time, and keep stirring until everything is smooth.
Serve on hot toast, like Welsh Rabbit.
Here the two most popular melted-cheese dishes tangle, but they're
held together with the common ingredient, tomato.
Fondue also appears as a sauce to pour over baked tomatoes. Stale
bread crumbs are soaked in tomato juice to make:
Tomato Baked Fondue
1 cup tomato juice
1 cup stale bread crumbs
1 cup grated sharp American cheese
1 tablespoon melted butter
Salt
4 eggs, separated and well beaten
Soak crumbs in tomato juice, stir cheese in butter until melted,
season with a little or no salt, depending on saltiness of the
cheese. Mix in the beaten yolks, fold in the white and bake
about 50 minutes in moderate oven.
BAKED FONDUES
Although Savarin's dunking Fondue was first to make a sensation on
these shores and is still in highest esteem among epicures, the Fondue
America took to its bosom was baked. The original recipe came from the
super-caseous province of Savoy under the explicit title, _La Fondue
au Fromage_.
La Fondue au Fromage
Make the usual creamy mixture of butter, flour, milk, yolks of
eggs and Gruyère, in thin slices for a change. Use red pepper
instead of black, splash in a jigger of kirsch but no white wine.
Finally fold in the egg whites and bake in a mold for 45 minutes.
We adapted this to our national taste which had already based the
whole business of melted cheese on the Welsh Rabbit with stale ale or
milk instead of white wine and Worcestershire, mustard and hot
peppers. Today we have come up with this:
100% American Fondue
2 cups scalded milk
2 cups stale bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon dry English mustard
Salt
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of pepper
2 cups American cheese (Cheddar)
2 egg yolks, well beaten
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
Soak crumbs in milk, season and stir in the cheese until melted.
Add the beaten egg yolks and stir until you have a smooth
mixture. Let this cool while beating the whites stiff, leaving
them slightly moist. Fold the whites into the cool, custardy mix
and bake in a buttered dish until firm. (About 50 minutes in a
moderate oven.)
This is more of a baked cheese job than a true Fondue, to our way of
thinking, and the scalded milk doesn't exactly take the place of the
wine or kirsch. It is characteristic of our bland cookery.
OTHER FONDUES PLAIN AND FANCY, BAKED AND NOT
Quickie Catsup Tummy Fondiddy
3/4 pound sharp cheese, diced
1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 cup catsup
1/2 teaspoon mustard
1 egg, lightly beaten
In double boiler melt cheese in soup. Blend thoroughly by
constant stirring. Remove from heat, lightly whip or fold in the
catsup and mustard mixed with egg. Serve on Melba toast or rusks.
This might be suggested as a novel midnight snack, with a cup of
cocoa, for a change.
Cheese and Rice Fondue
1 cup cooked rice
2 cups milk
4 eggs, separated and well beaten
1/2 cup grated cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cayenne, Worcestershire sauce or tabasco sauce, or all three
Heat rice (instead of bread crumbs) in milk, stir in cheese until
melted, add egg yolks beaten lemon-yellow, season, fold in stiff
egg whites. Serve hot on toast.
Corn and Cheese Fondue
1 cup bread crumbs
1 large can creamed corn
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
2 cups cottage cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, well beaten
Mix all ingredients together and bake in buttered casserole set
in pan of hot water. Bake about 1 hour in moderate oven, or until
set.
Cheese Fondue
1 cup grated Cheddar
1/2 cup crumbled Roquefort
1 cup pimento cheese
3 tablespoons cream
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon Worcestershire
Stir everything together over hot water until smooth and creamy.
Then whisk until fluffy, moistening with more cream or mayonnaise
if too stiff.
Serve on Melba toast, or assorted thin toasted crackers.
Brick Fondue
1/2 cup butter
2 cups grated Brick cheese
1/2 cup warm milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
Melt butter and cheese together, use wire whisk to whip in the
warm milk. Season. Take from fire and beat in the eggs, one at a
time. Please note that Fondue protocol calls for each egg to be
beaten separately in cases like this.
Serve over hot toast or crackers.
Cheddar Dunk Bowl
3/4 pound sharp Cheddar cheese
3 tablespoons cream
2/3 teaspoon dry mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire
Grate the cheese powdery fine and mash it together with the cream
until fluffy. Season and serve in a beautiful bowl for dunking in
the original style of Savarin, although this is a static
imitation of the real thing.
All kinds of crackers and colorful dips can be used, from celery
stalks and potato chips to thin paddles cut from Bombay duck.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Seven_
Soufflés, Puffs and Ramekins
There isn't much difference between Cheese Soufflés, Puffs and
Ramekins. The _English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_, the oldest,
biggest and best of such works in English, lumps Cheese Puffs and
Ramekins together, giving the same recipes for both, although it
treats each extensively under its own name when not made with cheese.
Cheese was the basis of the original French Ramequin, cheese and bread
crumbs or puff paste, baked in a mold, (with puff again the principal
factor in Soufflé, from the French _souffler_, puff up).
Basic Soufflé
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
4 tablespoons flour
1-1/4 cups hot milk, scalded
1 teaspoon salt
A dash of cayenne
1/2 cup grated Cheddar cheese, sharp
2 egg yolks, beaten lemon-yellow
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
Melt butter, stir in flour and milk gradually until thick and
smooth. Season and add the cheese, continuing the cooking and
slow stirring until velvety. Remove from heat and let cool
somewhat; then stir in the egg yolks with a light hand and an
upward motion. Fold in the stiff whites and when evenly mixed
pour into a big, round baking dish. (Some butter it and some
don't.) To make sure the top will be even when baked, run a spoon
or knife around the surface, about 1 inch from the edge of the
dish, before baking slowly in a moderate oven until puffed high
and beautifully browned. Serve instantly for fear the Soufflé may
fall. The baking takes up to an hour and the egg whites shouldn't
be beaten so stiff they are hard to fold in and contain no air to
expand and puff up the dish.
To perk up the seasonings, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice,
nutmeg and even garlic are often used to taste, especially in England.
While Cheddar is the preferred cheese, Parmesan runs it a close
second. Then comes Swiss. You may use any two or all three of these
together. Sometimes Roquefort is added, as in the Ramekin recipes
below.
Parmesan Soufflé
Make the same as Basic Soufflé, with these small modifications in
the ingredients:
1 full cup of grated Parmesan
1 extra egg in place of the 1/2 cup of Cheddar cheese
A little more butter
Black pepper, not cayenne
Swiss Soufflé
Make the same as Basic Soufflé, with these slight changes:
1-1/4 cups grated Swiss cheese instead of the Cheddar cheese
Nutmeg in place of the cayenne
Parmesan-Swiss Soufflé
Make the same as Basic Soufflé, with these little differences:
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese, and 1/2 cup grated Parmesan in place of
the Cheddar cheese
1/4 teaspoon each of sugar and black pepper for seasoning.
Any of these makes a light, lovely luncheon or a proper climax to a
grand dinner.
Cheese-Corn Soufflé
Make as Basic Soufflé, substituting for the scalded milk 1 cup of
sieved and strained juice from cream-style canned corn.
Cheese-Spinach Soufflé
Sauté 1-1/2 cups of finely chopped, drained spinach in butter
with 1 teaspoon finely grated onion, and then whip it until light
and fluffy. Mix well into the white sauce of the Basic Soufflé
before adding the cheese and following the rest of the recipe.
Cheese-Tomato Soufflé
Substitute hot tomato juice for the scalded milk.
Cheese-Sea-food Soufflé
Add 1-1/2 cups finely chopped or ground lobster, crab, shrimp,
other sea food or mixture thereof, with any preferred seasoning
added.
Cheese-Mushroom Soufflé
1-1/2 cups grated sharp Cheddar
1 cup cream of mushroom soup
Paprika, to taste
Salt
2 egg yolks, well beaten
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
2 tablespoons chopped, cooked bacon
2 tablespoons sliced, blanched almonds
Heat cheese with soup and paprika, adding the cheese gradually
and stirring until smooth. Add salt and thicken the sauce with
egg yolks, still stirring steadily, and finally fold in the
whites. Sprinkle with bacon and almonds and bake until golden
brown and puffed high (about 1 hour).
Cheese-Potato Soufflé (Potato Puff)
6 potatoes
2 onions
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 cup hot milk
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon salt
A dash of pepper
2 egg yolks, well beaten
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
1/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
Cook potatoes and onions together until tender and put through a
ricer. Mix with all the other ingredients except the egg whites
and the Cheddar. Fold in the egg whites, mix thoroughly and pour
into a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle the 1/4 cup of Cheddar on
top and bake in moderate oven about 1/2 hour, until golden-brown
and well puffed. Serve instantly.
Variations of this popular Soufflé leave out the onion and
simplify matters by using 2 cups of mashed potatoes. Sometimes 1
tablespoon of catsup and another of minced parsley is added to
the mixture. Or onion juice alone, to take the place of the
cooked onions--about a tablespoon, full or scant.
The English, in concocting such a Potato Puff or Soufflé, are inclined
to make it extra peppery, as they do most of their Cheese Soufflés,
with not only "a dust of black pepper" but "as much cayenne as may be
stood on the face of a sixpence."
Cheese Fritter Soufflés
These combine ham with Parmesan cheese and are even more
delicately handled in the making than crêpes suzette.
PUFFS
Three-in-One Puffs
1 cup grated Swiss
1 cup grated Parmesan
1 cup cream cheese
5 eggs, lightly beaten
salt and pepper
Mix the cheeses into one mass moistened with the beaten eggs,
splashed on at intervals. When thoroughly incorporated, put in
ramekins, tiny tins, cups, or any sort of little mold of any
shape. Bake in hot oven about 10 minutes, until richly browned.
Such miniature Soufflés serve as liaison officers for this entire
section, since they are baked in ramekins, or ramequins, from the
French word for the small baking dish that holds only one portion.
These may be paper boxes, usually round, earthenware, china, Pyrex,
of any attractive shape in which to bake or serve the Puffs.
More commonly, in America at least, Puffs are made without ramekin
dishes, as follows:
Fried Puffs
2 egg whites, beaten stiff
1/2 cup grated cheese
1 tablespoon flour
Salt
Paprika
Into the stiff egg whites fold the cheese, flour and seasonings.
When thoroughly mixed pat into shape desired, roll in crumbs and
fry.
Roquefort Puffs
1/8 pound genuine French Roquefort
1 egg white, beaten stiff
8 crackers or 2-inch bread rounds
Cream the Roquefort, fold in the egg white, pile on crackers and
bake 15 minutes in slow oven.
The constant repetition of "beaten stiff" in these recipes may give
the impression that the whites are badly beaten up, but such is not
the case. They are simply whipped to peaks and left moist and
glistening as a teardrop, with a slight sad droop to them that shows
there is still room for the air to expand and puff things up in
cooking.
Parmesan Puffs
Make a spread of mayonnaise or other salad dressing with equal
parts of imported Parmesan, grated fine. Spread on a score or
more of crackers in a roomy pan and broil a couple of minutes
till they puff up golden-brown.
Use only the best Parmesan, imported from Italy; or, second best,
from Argentina where the rich pampas grass and Italian settlers
get together on excellent Parmesan and Romano. Never buy Parmesan
already grated; it quickly loses its flavor.
Breakfast Puffs
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/4 cup finely grated cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix all together to a smooth, light batter and fill ramekins or
cups half full; then bake in quick oven until they are puffing
over the top and golden-brown.
Danish Fondue Puffs
1 stale roll
1/2 cup boiling hot milk
Salt
Pepper
2 cups freshly grated Cheddar cheese
4 egg yolks, beaten lemon-yellow
4 egg whites, beaten stiff
Soak roll in boiling milk and beat to a paste. Mix with cheese
and egg yolks. When smooth and thickened fold in the egg whites
and fill ramekins, tins, cups or paper forms and slowly bake
until puffed up and golden-brown.
New England Cheese Puffs
1 cup sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Hungarian paprika
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
2 egg yolks, beaten lemon-yellow
1/2 cup milk
1 cup freshly grated Cheddar cheese
2 egg whites, beaten stiff but not dry
Sift dry ingredients together, mix yolks with milk and stir in.
Add cheese and when thoroughly incorporated fold in the egg
whites to make a smooth batter. Drop from a big spoon into hot
deep fat and cook until well browned.
Caraway seeds are sometimes added. Poppy seeds are also used, and
either of these makes a snappier puff, especially tasty when
served with soup.
A few drops of tabasco give this an extra tang.
Cream Cheese Puffs
1/2 pound cream cheese
1 cup milk
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
Soften cheese by heating over hot water. Remove from heat and add
milk, eggs and seasoning. Beat until well blended, then pour into
custard cups, ramekins or any other individual baking dishes that
are attractive enough to serve the puffs in.
RAMEKINS OR RAMEQUINS
Some Ramekin dishes are made so exquisitely that they may be collected
like snuff bottles.
Ramekins are utterly French, both the cooked Puffs and the individual
dishes in which they are baked. Essentially a Cheese Puff, this is
also _au gratin_ when topped with both cheese and browned bread
crumbs. By a sort of poetic cook's license the name is also applied to
any kind of cake containing cheese and cooked in the identifying
one-portion ramekin. It is used chiefly in the plural, however,
together with the name of the chief ingredient, such as "Chicken
Ramekins" and:
Cheese Ramekins I
2 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
1/8 pound butter, melted
1/8 pound grated cheese
Mix well and bake in individual molds for 15 minutes.
Cheese Ramekins II
3 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 teaspoon each, salt and pepper
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1-1/2 cups milk
Mix the first four dry ingredients together, stir eggs into the
milk and add. Stir to a smooth batter and bake in buttered
ramekins, standing in water, in moderate oven. Serve piping hot,
for like Soufflés and all associated Puffs, the hot air will puff
out of them quickly; then they will sink and be inedible.
TWO ANCIENT ENGLISH RECIPES, STILL GOING STRONG
Cheese Ramekins III
Grate 1/2 pound of any dry, rich cheese. Butter a dozen small
paper cases, or little boxes of stiff writing paper like Soufflé
cases. Put a saucepan containing 1/2 pint of water over the fire,
add 2 tablespoons of butter, and when the water boils, stir in 1
heaping tablespoonful of flour. Beat the mixture until it shrinks
away from the sides of the saucepan; then stir in the grated
cheese. Remove the paste thus made from the fire, and let it
partly cool. In the meantime separate the yolks from the whites
of three eggs, and beat them until the yolks foam and the whites
make a stiff froth. Put the mixture at once into the buttered
paper cases, only half-filling them (since they rise very high
while being baked) with small slices of cheese, and bake in a
moderate oven for about 15 minutes. As soon as the Puffs are
done, put the cases on a hot dish covered with a folded napkin,
and serve very hot.
The most popular cheese for Ramekins has always been, and still is,
Gruyère. But because the early English also adopted Italian Parmesan,
that followed as a close second, and remains there today.
Sharp Cheddar makes tangy Ramekins, as will be seen in this second
oldster; for though it prescribes Gloucester and Cheshire
"'arf-and-'arf," both are essentially Cheddars. Gloucester has been
called "a glorified Cheshire" and the latter has long been known as a
peculiarly rich and colorful elder brother of Cheddar, described in
Kenelme Digby's _Closet Open'd_ as a "quick, fat, rich, well-tasted
cheese."
Cheese Ramekins IV
Scrape fine 1/4 pound of Gloucester cheese and 1/4 pound of
Cheshire cheese. Beat this scraped cheese in a mortar with the
yolks of 4 eggs, 1/4 pound of fresh butter, and the crumbs of a
French roll boiled in cream until soft. When all this is well
mixed and pounded to a paste, add the beaten whites of 4 eggs.
Should the paste seem too stiff, 1 or 2 tablespoons of sherry may
be added. Put the paste into paper cases, and bake in a Dutch
oven till nicely browned. The Ramekins should be served very hot.
Since both Gloucester cheese and Cheshire cheese are not easily come
by even in London today, it would be hard to reproduce this in the
States. So the best we can suggest is to use half-and-half of two of
our own great Cheddars, say half-Coon and half-Wisconsin Longhorn, or
half-Tillamook and half-Herkimer County. For there's no doubt about
it, contrasting cheeses tickle the taste buds, and as many as three
different kinds put together make Puffs all the more perfect.
Ramequins à la Parisienne
2 cups milk
1 cup cream
1 ounce salt butter
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup grated Gruyère
Coarsely ground pepper
An atom of nutmeg
A _soupçon_ of garlic
A light touch of powdered sugar
8 eggs, separated
Boil milk and cream together. Melt butter, mix in the flour and
stir over heat 5 minutes, adding the milk and cream mixture a
little at a time. When thoroughly cooked, remove from heat and
stir in cheese, seasonings and the yolks of all 8 eggs, well
beaten, and the whites of 2 even better beaten. When well mixed,
fold in the remaining egg whites, stiffly beaten, until you have
a batter as smooth and thick as cream. Pour this into ramekins of
paper, porcelain or earthenware, filling each about 2/3 full to
allow for them to puff up as they bake in a very slow oven until
golden-brown (or a little less than 20 minutes).
Le Ramequin Morézien
This celebrated specialty of Franche-Comté is described as "a
porridge of water, butter, seasoning, chopped garlic and toast;
thickened with minced Gruyère and served very hot."
Several French provinces are known for distinctive individual Puffs
usually served in the dainty fluted forms they are cooked in. In
Jeanne d'Arc's Lorraine, for instance, there are the simply named _Les
Ramequins_, made of flour, Gruyère and eggs.
Swiss-Roquefort Ramekins
1/4 pound Swiss cheese
1/4 pound Roquefort cheese
1/2 pound butter
8 eggs, separated
4 breakfast rolls, crusts removed
1/2 cup cream
The batter is made in the usual way, with the soft insides of the
rolls simmered in the cream and stirred in. The egg whites are
folded in last, as always, the batter poured into ramekins part
full and baked to a golden-brown. Then they are served
instantaneously, lest they fall.
Puff Paste Ramekins
Puff or other pastry is rolled out fiat and sprinkled with fine
tasty cheese or any cheese mixture, such as Parmesan with Gruyère
and/or Swiss Sapsago for a piquant change, but in lesser quantity
than the other cheeses used. Parmesan cheese has long been the
favorite for these.
Fold paste into 3 layers, roll out again and dust with more
cheese. Fold once more and roll this out and cut in small fancy
shapes to bake 10 to 15 minutes in a hot oven. Brushing with egg
yolk before baking makes these Ramekins shine.
Frying Pan Ramekins
Melt 2 ounces of butter, let it cool a little and then mix with
1/2 pound of cheese. Fold in the whites of 3 eggs, beaten stiff
but not dry. Cover frying pan with buttered papers, put slices of
bread on this and cover with the cheese mixture. Cook about 5
minutes, take it off and brown it with a salamander.
There are two schools of salamandering among turophiles. One holds
that it toughens the cheese and makes it less digestible; the other
that it's simply swell. Some of the latter addicts have special
cheese-branding irons made with their monograms, to identify their
creations, whether they be burned on the skins of Welsh Rabbits or
Frying Pan Ramekins. Salamandering with an iron that has a gay,
carnivalesque design can make a sort of harlequin Ramekin.
Casserole Ramekin
Here is the Americanization of a French original: In a deep
casserole lay alternate slices of white bread and Swiss cheese,
with the cheese slices a bit bigger all around. Beat 2 eggs with
2 cups of milk, season with salt and--of all things--nutmeg!
Proceed to bake like individual Ramekins.
[Illustration]
_Chapter Eight_
Pizzas, Blintzes, Pastes, Cheese Cakes, etc.
No matter how big or hungry your family, you can always appease them
with pizza.
Pizza--The Tomato Pie of Sicily
DOUGH
1 package yeast, dissolved in warm water
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Make dough of this. Knead 12 to 20 minutes. Pat into a ball,
cover it tight and let stand 3 hours in warm place until twice
the size.
TOMATO PASTE
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, sliced thin
1 can Italian tomato paste
8 to 10 anchovy filets, cut small
1/2 teaspoon oregano
Salt
Crushed chili pepper
2-1/2 cups water
In the oil fry onion tender but not too brown, stir in tomato
paste and keep stirring 3 or 4 minutes. Season, pour water over
and simmer slowly 25 to 30 minutes. Add anchovies when sauce is
done.
CHEESE
1/2 cup grated Italian, Parmesan, Romano or Pecorino, depending
on your pocketbook
Procure a low, wide and handsome tin pizza pan, or reasonable
substitute, and grease well before spreading the well-raised
dough 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Poke your finger tips haphazardly
into the dough to make marks that will catch the sauce when you
pour it on generously. Shake on Parmesan or Parmesan-type cheese
and bake in hot oven 1/2 hour, then 1/4 hour more at lower heat
until the pizza is golden-brown. Cut in wedges like any other pie
and serve.
The proper pans come all tin and a yard wide, down to regular
apple-pie size, but twelve-inch pans are the most popular.
Miniature Pizzas
Miniature pizzas are split English muffins rubbed with garlic or
onion and brushed with olive oil. Cover with tomato sauce and a
slice of Mozzarella cheese, anchovy, oregano and grated Parmesan,
and heat 8 minutes.
Italian-Swiss Scallopini
1 pound paper-thin veal cutlets
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup grated Swiss and Parmesan, mixed
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten with water
Butter
Salt
Paprika
Moisten veal with egg and roll in flour mixed with cheese,
quickly brown, lower flame and cook 4 to 5 minutes till tender.
Dust with paprika and salt.
Neapolitan Baked Lasagne, or Stuffed Noodles
1 pound lasagne, or other wide noodles
1-1/2 cups cooked thick tomato sauce with meat
1/2 pound Ricotta or cottage cheese
1 pound Mozzarella or American Cheddar
1/4 pound grated Parmesan, Romano or Pecorino
Salt
Pepper, preferably crushed red pods
A shaker filled with grated Parmesan, or reasonable substitute
Cook wide or broad noodles 15 to 20 minutes in rapidly boiling
salted water until tender, but not soft, and drain. Pour 1/2 cup
of tomato sauce in baking dish or pan, cover with about 1/2 of
the noodles, sprinkle with grated Parmesan, a layer of sauce, a
layer of Mozzarella and dabs of Ricotta. Continue in this
fashion, alternating layers and seasoning each, ending with a
final spread of sauce, Parmesan and red pepper. Bake firm in
moderate oven, about 15 minutes, and served in wedges like pizza,
with canisters of grated Parmesan, crushed red pepper pods and
more of the sauce to taste.
Little Hats, Cappelletti
Freshly made and still moist Cappelletti, little hats, contrived
out of tasty paste, may be had in any Little Italy macaroni shop.
These may be stuffed sensationally in four different flavors
with only two cheeses.
Brown slices of chicken and ham separately, in butter. Mince each
very fine and divide in half, to make four mixtures in equal
amounts. Season these with salt, pepper and nutmeg and a binding
of 2 parts egg yolk to 1 part egg white.
With these meat mixtures you can make four different-flavored
fillings:
Ham and Mozzarella Chicken and Mozzarella Ham and Ricotta Chicken
and Ricotta
Fill the little hats alternately, so you'll have the same number
of each different kind. Pinch edges tight together to keep the
stuffings in while boiling fast for 5 minutes in chicken broth
(or salted water, if you must).
Since these Cappelletti are only a pleasing form and shape of
ravioli, they are served in the same way on hot plates, with
plain tomato sauce and Parmesan or reasonable substitute. If we
count this final seasoning as an ingredient, this makes three
cheeses, so that each of half a dozen taste buds can be getting
individual sensations without letting the others know what it's
doing.
Dauphiny Ravioli
This French variant of the famous Italian pockets of pastry
follows the Cappelletti pattern, with any fresh goat cheese and
Gruyère melted with butter and minced parsley and boiled in
chicken broth.
Italian Fritters
1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 pound fresh Ricotta
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella
Rind of 1/2 lemon, grated
3 tablespoons brandy
Salt
Stir and mix well together in the order given and let stand 1
hour or more to thicken the batter so it will hold its shape
while cooking.
Shape batter like walnuts and hold one at a time in the bowl of a
long-handled spoon dipped for 10 seconds in boiling hot oil.
Fritter the "walnuts" so, and serve at once with powdered sugar.
To make fascinating cheese croquettes, mix several contrasting
cheeses in this batter.
Italian Asparagus and Cheese
This gives great scope for contrasting cheeses in one and the
same dish. In a shallow baking pan put a foundation layer of
grated Cheddar and a little butter. Cover with a layer of tender
parts of asparagus, lightly salted; next a layer of grated
Gruyère with a bit of butter, and another of asparagus. From here
you can go as far as you like with varied layers of melting
cheeses alternating with asparagus, until you come to the top,
where you add two more kinds of cheese, a mixture of powdered
Parmesan with Sapsago to give the new-mown hay scent.
Garlic on Cheese
For one sandwich prepare 30 or 40 garlic cloves by removing skins
and frying out the fierce pungence in smoking olive oil. They
skip in the hot pan like Mexican jumping beans. Toast one side of
a thickish slice of bread, put this side down on a grilling pan,
cover it with a slice of imported Swiss Emmentaler or Gruyère, of
about the same size, shape and thickness. Stick the cooked garlic
cloves, while still blistering hot, in a close pattern into the
cheese and brown for a minute under the grill. Salt lightly and
dash with paprika for the color. (Recipe by Bob Brown in Merle
Armitage's collection _Fit for a King_.)
Spaniards call garlic cloves teeth, Englishmen call them toes. It was
cheese and garlic together that inspired Shakespeare to Hotspur's
declaration in _King Henry IV_:
I had rather live
With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,
Than feed on cates and have him talk to me
In any summer-house in Christendom.
Some people can take a mere _soupçon_ of the stuff, while others can
down it by the soup spoon, so we feel it necessary in reprinting our
recipe to point to the warning of another early English writer:
"Garlic is very dangerous to young children, fine women and hot young
men."
Blintzes
This snow white member of the crêpes suzette sorority is the most
popular deb in New York's fancy cheese dishes set. Almost unknown
here a decade or two ago, it has joined blinis, kreplach and
cheeseburgers as a quick and sustaining lunch for office workers.
2 eggs
1 cup water
1 cup sifted flour
Salt
Cooking oil
1/2 pound cottage cheese
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups sour cream
Beat 1 egg light and make a batter with the water, flour and salt
to taste. Heat a well-greased small frying pan and make little
pancakes with 2 tablespoons of batter each. Cook the cakes over
low heat and on one side only. Slide each cake off on a white
cloth, with the cooked side down. While these are cooling make
the blintz-filling by beating together the second egg, cottage
cheese and butter. Spread each pancake thickly with the mixture
and roll or make into little pockets or envelopes with the end
tucked in to hold the filling. Cook in foil till golden-brown and
serve at once with sufficient sour cream to smother them.
Vatroushki
Russia seems to have been the cradle of all sorts of blinis and
blintzes, and perhaps the first, of them to be made was
vatroushki, a variant of the blintzes above. The chief
difference is that rounds of puff paste dough are used instead of
the hot cakes, 1 teaspoon of sugar is added to the cottage cheese
filling, and the sour cream, 1/2 cup, is mixed into this instead
of being served with it. Little cups filled with this mix are
made by pinching the edges of the dough together. The tops are
brushed with egg yolk and baked in a brisk oven.
Cottage Cheese Pancakes
1 cup prepared pancake
4 tablespoons top milk or light cream
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, well beaten
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups cottage cheese, put through ricer
Mix batter and stir in cheese last until smooth.
Cheese Waffles
2 cups prepared waffle flour
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup grated sharp Cheddar
3 egg whites, beaten stiff
Stir up a smooth waffle batter of the first 4 ingredients and
fold in egg whites last.
Today you can get imported canned Holland cheese waffles to heat
quickly and serve.
Napkin Dumpling
1 pound cottage cheese
1/8 pound butter, softened
3 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup Farina
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cinnamon and brown sugar
Mix together all ingredients (except the cinnamon and sugar) to
form a ball. Moisten a linen napkin with cold water and tie the
ball of dough in it. Simmer 40 to 50 minutes in salted boiling
water, remove from napkin, sprinkle well with cinnamon and brown
sugar, and serve. This is on the style of Hungarian potato and
other succulent dumplings and may be served with goulash or as a
meal in itself.
BUTTER AND CHEESE
Where fish is scant
And fruit of trees,
Supply that want
With butter and cheese.
Thomas Tusser in
_The Last Remedy_
Butter and cheese are mixed together in equal parts for cheese butter.
Serbia has a cheese called Butter that more or less matches Turkey's
Durak, of which butter is an indispensable ingredient, and French
Cancoillote is based on sour milk simmered with butter.
The English have a cheese called Margarine, made with the butter
substitute. In Westphalia there are no two schools of thought about
whether 'tis better to eat butter with cheese or not, for in
Westphalia sour-milk cheese, butter is mixed in as part of the process
of making. The Arabs press curds and butter together to store in vats,
and the Scots have Crowdie or Cruddy Butter.
BUTTERMILK CHEESE
The value of buttermilk is stressed in an extravagant old Hindu
proverb: "A man may live without bread, but without buttermilk he
dies."
Cheese was made before butter, being the earliest form of dairy
manufacturing, so buttermilk cheese came well after plain milk cheese,
even after whey cheese. It is very tasty, and a natural with potato
salad. The curd is salted after draining and sold in small parchment
packages.
German "leather" cheese has buttermilk mixed with the plain. The Danes
make their Appetitost with sour buttermilk. Ricotta Romano, for a
novelty, is made of sheep buttermilk.
COTTAGE CHEESE
In America cottage cheese is also called pot, Dutch and smearcase. It
is the easiest and quickest to make of all cheeses, by simply letting
milk sour, or adding buttermilk to curdle it, then stand a while on
the back of the kitchen stove, since it is homemade as a rule. It is
drained in a bag of cheesecloth and may be eaten the same day, usually
salted.
The Pilgrims brought along the following two tried and true recipes
from olde England, and both are still in use and good repute:
_Cottage Cheese No. 1_
Let milk sour until clotted. Pour boiling water over and it will
immediately curd. Stir well and pour into a colander. Pour a little
cold water on the curd, salt it and break it up attractively for
serving.
_Cottage Cheese No. 2_
A very rich and tasty variety is made of equal parts whole milk and
buttermilk heated together to just under the boiling point. Pour into
a linen bag and let drain until next day. Then remove, salt to taste
and add a bit of butter or cream to make a smooth, creamy consistency,
and pat into balls the size of a Seville orange.
CREAM CHEESE
In England there are three distinct manners of making cream cheese:
1. Fresh milk strained and lightly drained.
2. Scalded cream dried and drained dry, like Devonshire.
3. Rennet curd ripened, with thin, edible rind, or none, packaged
in small blocks or miniature bricks by dairy companies, as
in the U.S. Philadelphia Cream cheese.
American cream cheeses follow the English pattern, being named from
then: region or established brands owned by Breakstone, Borden, Kraft,
Shefford, etc.
Cream cheese such as the first listed above is easier to make than
cottage cheese or any other. Technically, in fact, it is not a cheese
but the dried curd of milk and is often called virginal. Fresh milk is
simply strained through muslin in a perforated box through which the
whey and extra moisture drains away for three or four days, leaving a
residue as firm as fresh butter.
In America, where we mix cream cheese with everything, a popular
assortment of twelve sold in New York bears these ingredients and
names: Chives, Cherry, Garden, Caviar, Lachs, Pimiento, Olive and
Pimiento, Pineapple, Relish, Scallion, Strawberry, and Triple Decker
of Relish, Pimiento and Cream in layers.
In Italy there is Stracchino Cream, in Sweden Chantilly. Finally, to
come to France, la Foncée or Fromage de Pau, a cream also known around
the world as Crême d'Isigny, Double Crême, Fromage à la Crême de Gien,
Pots de Crême St. Gervais, etc. etc.
The French go even farther by eating thick fresh cream with Chevretons
du Beaujolais and Fromage Blanc in the style that adds _à la crême_ to
their already glorified names.
The English came along with Snow Cream Cheese that is more of a
dessert, similar to Italian Cream Cheese.
We'd like to have a cheese ice cream to contrast with too sweet ones.
Attempts at this have been made, both here and in England; Scottish
Caledonian cream came closest. We have frozen cheese with fruit, to be
sure, but no true cheese ice cream as yet, though some cream cheeses
seem especially suitable.
The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
And I met with a ballad I can't say where,
That wholly consisted of lines like these,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese.)
In this parody by Calverly, "The Farmer's Daughter," the ingredients
suggest cheese cake, dating back to 1381 In England. From that year
Kettner in his _Book of the Table_ quotes this recipe:
Take cream of almonds or of cow milk and beat them well together;
and make small coffins (that is, cases of pastry), and do it (put
it) therein; and do (put) thereto sugar and good powders. Or take
good fat cheese and eggs and make them of divers colours, green,
red or yellow, and bake them or serve them forth.
This primitive "receipt" grew up into Richmond maids of honor that
caused Kettner to wax poetic with:
At Richmond we are permitted to touch with our lips a countless
number of these maids--light and airy as the "airy, fairy
Lilian." What more can the finest poetry achieve in quickening
the things of earth into tokens and foretastes of heaven, with
glimpses of higher life and ethereal worlds.
CHEESECAKES
_Coronation Cheese Cake_
The _Oxford Dictionary_ defines cheese cake as a "tartlet filled with
sweet curds, etc." This shows that the cheese is the main thing, and
the and-so-forth just a matter of taste. We are delighted to record
that the Lord Mayor of London picked traditional cheese tarts, the
maids of honor mentioned earlier in this section, as the Coronation
dessert with which to regale the second Queen Elizabeth at the city
luncheon in Guildhall This is most fitting, since these tarts were
named after the maids of honor at the court of the first Queen
Elizabeth. The original recipe is said to have sold for a thousand
pounds. These Richmond maids of honor had the usual cheese cake
ingredients: butter and eggs and pounds of cheese, but what made the
subtle flavor: nutmeg, brandy, lemon, orange-flower water, or all
four?
More than 2,000 years before this land of Coronation cheese cake, the
Greeks had a word for it--several in fact: Apician Cheese Cake,
Aristoxenean, and Philoxenean among them. Then the Romans took it over
and we read from an epistle of the period:
Thirty times in this one year, Charinus, while you have been
arranging to make your will, have I sent you cheese cakes
dripping with Hyblaean Thyme. (Celestial honey, such as that of
Mount Hymettus we still get from Greece.)
Plato mentioned cheese cake, and a town near Thebes was named for it
before Christ was born, at a time when cheese cakes were widely known
as "dainty food for mortal man."
Today cheese cakes come in a half dozen popular styles, of which the
ones flavored with fresh pineapple are the most popular in New York.
But buyers delight in every sort, including the one hundred percent
American type called cheese pies.
Indeed, there seems to be no dividing line between cheese cakes and
cheese pies. While most of them are sweet, some are made piquant with
pimientos and olives. We offer a favorite of ours made from
popcorn-style pot cheese put through a sieve:
Pineapple Cheese Cake
2-1/2 pounds sieved pot cheese
1-inch piece vanilla bean
1/4 pound sweet butter, melted
1/2 small box graham crackers, crushed fine
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 small can crushed pineapple, drained
2 cups milk
1/3 cup flour
In a big bowl mix everything except the graham crackers and
pineapple in the order given above. Butter a square Pyrex pan and
put in the graham-cracker dust to make a crust. Cover this evenly
with the pineapple and pour in the cheese-custard mixture. Bake I
hour in a "quiet" oven, as the English used to say for a moderate
one, and when done set aside for 12 hours before eating.
Because of the time and labor involved maybe you had better buy your
cheese cakes, even though some of the truly fine ones cost a dime a
bite, especially the pedigreed Jewish-American ones in Manhattan.
Reuben's and Lindy's are two leaders at about five dollars a cake.
Some are fruited with cherries or strawberries.
Cheese Custard
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
A dash of pepper or paprika
3 tablespoons melted butter
A few drops of onion juice, if desired
4 tablespoons grated Swiss (imported)
Mix all together, set in molds in pan of hot water, and bake
until brown.
Open-faced Cheese Pie
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 pounds soft smearcase
Whip everything together and fill two pie crusts. Bake without
any upper crust.
The Apple-pie Affinity
Hot apple pie was always accompanied with cheese in New England, even
as every slice of apple pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick,
according to law. Pioneer hot pies were baked in brick ovens and
flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon and rose geranium. The cheese was
Cheddar, but today all sorts of pie and cheese combinations are
common, such as banana pie and Gorgonzola, mince with Danish Blue,
pumpkin with cream cheese, peach pie with Hablé, and even a green
dusting of Sapsago over raisin pie.
Apple pie _au gratin_, thickly grated over with Parmesan, Caciocavallo
or Sapsago, is something special when served with black coffee. Cider,
too, or applejack, is a natural accompaniment to any dessert of apple
with its cheese.
Apple Pie Adorned
Apple pie is adorned with cream and cheese by pressing cream
cheese through a ricer and folding in plenty of double cream
beaten thick and salted a little. Put the mixture in a pastry
tube and decorate top of pie in fanciful fashion.
Apple Pie á la Cheese
Lay a slice of melting cheese on top of apple (or any fruit or
berry) pie, and melt under broiler 2 to 3 minutes.
Cheese-crusty Apple Pie
In making an apple pie, roll out the top crust and sprinkle with
sharp Cheddar, grated, dot with butter and bake golden-brown.
Flan au Fromage
To make this Franche-Comté tart of crisp paste, simply mix
coarsely grated Gruyère with beaten egg, fill the tart cases and
bake.
For any cheese pastry or fruit and custard pie crusts, work in
tasty shredded sharp Cheddar in the ratio of 1 to 4 parts of
flour.
Christmas Cake Sandwiches
A traditional Christmas carol begs for:
A little bit of spice cake
A little bit of cheese,
A glass of cold water,
A penny, if you please.
For a festive handout cut the spice cake or fruit cake in slices
and sandwich them with slices of tasty cheese between.
To maintain traditional Christmas cheer for the elders, serve
apple pie with cheese and applejack.
Angelic Camembert
1 ripe Camembert, imported
1 cup Anjou dry white wine
1/2 pound sweet butter, softened
2 tablespoons finely grated toast crumbs
Lightly scrape all crusty skin from the Camembert and when its
creamy interior stands revealed put it in a small, round covered
dish, pour in the wine, cover tightly so no bouquet or aroma can
possibly escape, and let stand overnight.
When ready to serve drain off and discard any wine left, dry the
cheese and mash with the sweet butter into an angelic paste.
Reshape in original Camembert form, dust thickly with the crumbs
and there you are.
Such a delicate dessert is a favorite with the ladies, since some of
them find a prime Camembert a bit too strong if taken straight.
Although A. W. Fulton's observation in _For Men Only_ is going out of
date, it is none the less amusing:
In the course of a somewhat varied career I have only met one
woman who appreciated cheese. This quality in her seemed to me so
deserving of reward that I did not hesitate to acquire her hand
in marriage.
Another writer has said that "only gourmets among women seem to like
cheese, except farm women and foreigners." The association between
gourmets and farm women is borne out by the following urgent plea from
early Italian landowners:
_Ai contadini non far sapere
Quanta è buono it cacio con le pere_.
Don't let the peasants know
How good are cheese and pears.
Having found out for ourselves, we suggest a golden slice of Taleggio,
Stracchino, or pale gold Bel Paese to polish off a good dinner, with a
juicy Lombardy pear or its American equivalent, a Bartlett, let us
say.
This celestial association of cheese and pears is further accented by
the French:
_Entre la poire et le fromage_
Between the pear and the cheese.
This places the cheese after the fruit, as the last course, in
accordance with early English usage set down by John Clarke in his
_Paroemiologia_:
After cheese comes nothing.
But in his _Epigrams_ Ben Jonson serves them together.
Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be.
That brings us back to cheese and pippins:
I will make an end of my dinner; there's
pippins and cheese to come.
Shakespeare's _Merry Wives of Windsor_
When should the cheese be served? In England it is served before or
after the fruit, with or without the port.
Following _The Book of Keruynge_ in modern spelling we note when it
was published in 1431 the proper thing "after meat" was "pears, nuts,
strawberries, whortleberries (American huckleberries) and hard
cheese." In modern practice we serve some suitable cheese like
Camembert directly on slices of apple and pears, Gorgonzola on sliced
banana, Hablé spread on pineapple and a cheese dessert tray to match
the Lazy Lou, with everything crunchy down to Crackerjacks. Good, too,
are figs, both fresh and preserved, stuffed with cream cheese,
kumquats, avocados, fruity dunking mixtures of Pineapple cheese,
served in the scooped-out casque of the cheese itself, and apple or
pear and Provolone creamed and put back in the rind it came in. Pots
of liquored and wined cheeses, no end, those of your own making being
the best.
Champagned Roquefort or Gorgonzola
1/2 pound mellow Roquefort
1/4 pound sweet butter, softened
A dash cayenne
3/4 cup champagne
With a silver fork mix cheese and butter to a smooth paste,
moistening with champagne as you go along, using a little more or
less champagne according to consistency desired. Serve with the
demitasse and cognac, offering, besides crackers, gilt
gingerbread in the style of Holland Dutch cheese tasters, or just
plain bread.
After dinner cheeses suggested by Phil Alpert are:
FROM FRANCE: Port-Salut, Roblochon, Coulommiers, Camembert, Brie,
Roquefort, Calvados (try it with a spot of Calvados, apple brandy)
FROM THE U.S.: Liederkranz, Blue, Cheddar
FROM SWEDEN: Hablé Crême Chantilly
FROM ITALY: Taleggio, Gorgonzola, Provolone, Bel Paese
FROM HUNGARY: Kascaval
FROM SWITZERLAND: Swiss Gruyère
FROM GERMANY: Kümmelkäse
FROM NORWAY: Gjetost, Bondost
FROM HOLLAND: Edam, Gouda
FROM ENGLAND: Stilton
FROM POLAND: Warshawski Syr
[Illustration]
_Chapter Nine_
Au Gratin, Soups, Salads and Sauces
He who says _au gratin_ says Parmesan. Thomas Gray, the English poet,
saluted it two centuries ago with:
Parma, the happy country where huge cheeses grow.
On September 4, 1666, Pepys recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan,
"as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W.
Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a
century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his _Diary of a Country Parson_
wrote:
I sent Mr. Custance about 3 doz. more of apricots, and he sent me
back another large piece of fine Parmesan cheese. It was very
kind of him.
The second most popular cheese for _au gratin_ is Italian Romano, and,
for an entirely different flavor, Swiss Sapsago. The French, who gave
us this cookery term, use it in its original meaning for any dish with
a browned topping, usually of bread crumbs, or crumbs and cheese. In
America we think of _au gratin_ as grated cheese only, although
Webster says, "with a browned covering, often mixed with butter or
cheese; as, potatoes _au gratin_." So let us begin with that.
Potatoes au Gratin
2 cups diced cooked potatoes
2 tablespoons grated onion
1/2 cup grated American Cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
Salt
Pepper
More grated cheese for covering
In a buttered baking dish put a layer of diced potatoes, sprinkle
with onion and bits of butter. Next, scatter on a thin layer of
cheese and alternate with potatoes, onions and butter. Stir milk,
egg, salt and pepper together and pour it on the mixture. Top
everything with plenty of grated cheese to make it authentically
American _au gratin_. Bake until firm in moderate oven, about 1/2
hour.
Eggs au Gratin
Make a white sauce flavored with minced onion to pour over any
desired number of eggs broken into a buttered baking dish. Begin
by using half of the sauce and sprinkling on a lot of grated
cheese. After the eggs are in, pour on the rest of the sauce,
cover it with grated cheese and bread crumbs, drop in bits of
butter, and cook until brown in oven (or about 12 minutes).
Tomatoes au Gratin
Cover bottom of shallow baking pan with slices of tomato and
sprinkle liberally with bread crumbs and grated cheese, season
with salt, pepper and dots of butter, add another layer of
tomato slices, season as before and continue this, alternating
with cheese, until pan is full. Add a generous topping of crumbs,
cheese and butter. Bake 50 minutes in moderate oven.
Onion Soup au Gratin
4 or 5 onions, sliced
4 or 5 tablespoons butter
1 quart stock or canned consommé
1 quart bouillon made from dissolving 4 or 5 cubes
Rounds of toasted French bread
1-1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
Sauté onions in butter in a roomy saucepan until light golden,
and pour the stock over. When heated put in a larger casserole,
add the bouillon, season to taste and heat to boiling point. Let
simmer 15 minutes and serve in deep well-heated soup plates, the
bottoms covered with rounds of toasted French bread which have
been heaped with freshly grated Parmesan and browned under the
broiler. More cheese is served for guests to sprinkle on as
desired.
At gala parties, where wine flows, a couple of glasses of champagne
are often added to the bouillon.
In the famed onion soup _au gratin_ at Les Halles in Paris, grated
Gruyère is used in place of Parmesan. They are interchangeable in this
recipe.
AMERICAN CHEESE SOUPS
In this era of fine canned soups a quick cheese soup is made by
heating cream of tomato soup, ready made, and adding finely
grated Swiss or Parmesan to taste. French bread toasted and
topped with more cheese and broiled golden makes the best base to
pour this over, as is done with the French onion soup above.
The same cheese toasts are the basis of a simple milk-cheese
soup, with heated milk poured over and a seasoning of salt,
pepper, chopped chives, or a dash of nutmeg.
Chicken Cheese Soup
Heat together 1 cup milk, 1 cup water in which 2 chicken bouillon
cubes have been dissolved, and 1 can of condensed cream of
chicken soup. Stir in 1/4 cup grated American Cheddar cheese and
season with salt, pepper, and plenty of paprika until cheese
melts.
Other popular American recipes simply add grated cheese to lima
bean or split bean soup, peanut butter soup, or plain cheese soup
with rice.
Imported French _marmites_ are _de rigueur_ for a real onion soup _au
gratin_, and an imported Parmesan grinder might be used for freshly
ground cheese. In preparing, it is well to remember that they are
basically only melted cheese, melted from the top down.
CHEESE SALADS
When a Frenchman reaches the salad he is resting and in no hurry.
He eats the salad to prepare himself for the cheese.
Henri Charpentier, _Life & la Henri_,
Green Cheese Salad Julienne
Take endive, water cress and as many different kinds of crisp
lettuce as you can find and mix well with Provolone cheese cut in
thin julienne strips and marinated 3 to 4 hours in French
dressing. Crumble over the salad some Blue cheese and toss
everything thoroughly, with plenty of French dressing.
American Cheese Salad
Slice a sweet ripe pineapple thin and sprinkle with shredded
American Cheddar. Serve on lettuce dipped in French dressing.
Cheese and Nut Salad
Mix American Cheddar with an equal amount of nut meats and enough
mayonnaise to make a paste. Roll these in little balls and serve
with fruit salads, dusting lightly with finely grated Sapsago.
Brie or Camembert Salad
Fill ripe pear-or peach-halves with creamy imported Brie or
Camembert, sprinkle with honey, serve on lettuce drenched with
French dressing and scatter shredded almonds over. (Cream cheese
will do in a pinch. If the Camembert isn't creamy enough, mash it
with some sweet cream.)
Three-in-One Mold
3/4 cup cream cheese
1/2 cup grated American Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup Roquefort cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons gelatin, dissolved and stirred into
1/2 cup boiling water
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt
Pepper
2 cups cream, beaten stiff
1/2 cup minced chives
Mash the cheeses together, season gelatin liquid with lemon, salt
and pepper and stir into cheese with the whipped cream. Add
chives last Put in ring mold or any mold you fancy, chill well
and slice at table to serve on lettuce with a little mayonnaise,
or plain.
Swiss Cheese Salad
Dice 1/2 pound of cheese into 1/2-inch cubes. Slice one onion
very thin. Mix well in a soup plate. Dash with German mustard,
olive oil, wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce. Salt lightly and
grind in plenty of black pepper. Then stir, preferably with a
wooden spoon so you won't mash the cheese, until every hole is
drenched with the dressing.
Rosie's Swiss Breakfast Cheese Salad
Often Emmentaler is cubed in a salad for breakfast, relished specially
by males on the morning after. We quote the original recipe brought
over by Rosie from the Swiss Tyrol to thrill the writers' and artists'
colony of Ridgefield, New Jersey, in her brother Emil's White House
Inn:
First Rosie cut a thick slice of prime imported Emmentaler into
half-inch cubes. Then she mixed imported French olive oil, German
mustard and Swiss white wine vinegar with salt and freshly ground
pepper in a deep soup plate, sprinkled on a few drops of pepper
sauce scattered in the chunks of Schweizer and stirred the cubes
with a light hand, using a wooden fork and spoon to prevent
bruising.
The salad was ready to eat only when each and every tiny, shiny
cell of the Swiss from the homeland had been washed, oiled and
polished with the soothing mixture.
"Drink down the juice, too, when you have finished mine Breakfast
Cheese Salad," Rosie advised the customers. "It is the best cure
in the world for the worst hangover."
Gorgonzola and Banana Salad
Slice bananas lengthwise, as for a banana split. Sprinkle with
lemon juice and spread with creamy Gorgonzola. Sluice with French
dressing made with lemon juice in place of vinegar, to help bring
out the natural banana flavor of ripe Gorgonzola.
Cheese and Pea Salad
Cube 1/2 pound of American Cheddar and mix with a can of peas, 1
cup of diced celery, 1 cup of mayonnaise, 1/2 cup of sour cream,
and 2 tablespoons each of minced pimientos and sweet pickles.
Serve in lettuce cups with a sprinkling of parsley and chopped
radishes.
Apple and Cheese Salad
1/2 cup cream cheese
1 cup chopped pecans
Salt and pepper
Apples, sliced 1/2-inch thick
Lettuce leaves
Creamy salad dressing
Make tiny seasoned cheese balls, center on the apple slices
standing on lettuce leaves, and sluice with creamy salad
dressing.
Roquefort Cheese Salad Dressing
No cheese sauce is easier to make than the American favorite of
Roquefort cheese mashed with a fork and mixed with French
dressing. It is often made in a pint Mason jar and kept in the
refrigerator to shake up on occasion and toss over lettuce or
other salads.
Unfortunately, even when the Roquefort is the French import, complete
with the picture of the sheep in red, and _garanti véritable_, the
dressing is often ruined by bad vinegar and cottonseed oil (of all
things). When bottled to sell in stores, all sorts of extraneous
spice, oils and mustard flour are used where nothing more is necessary
than the manipulation of a fork, fine olive oil and good
vinegar--white wine, tarragon or malt. Some ardent amateurs must have
their splash of Worcestershire sauce or lemon juice with salt and
pepper. This Roquefort dressing is good on all green salads, but on
endive it's something special.
SAUCE MORNAY
Sauce Mornay has been hailed internationally as "the greatest culinary
achievement in cheese."
Nothing is simpler to make. All you do is prepare a white sauce
(the French Sauce Béchamel) and add grated Parmesan to your
liking, stirring it in until melted and the sauce is creamy. This
can be snapped up with cayenne or minced parsley, and when used
with fish a little of the cooking broth is added.
PLAIN CHEESE SAUCE
1 part of any grated cheese to 4 parts of white sauce
This is a mild sauce that is nice with creamed or hard-cooked
eggs. When the cheese content is doubled, 2 parts of cheese to 4
of white sauce, it is delicious on boiled cauliflower, baked
potatoes, macaroni and crackers soaked in milk.
The sauce may be made richer by mixing melted butter with the
flour in making the white sauce, or by beating egg yolk in with
the cheese.
From thin to medium to thick it serves divers purposes:
_Thin_: it may be used instead of milk to make a tasty milk toast,
sometimes spiced with curry.
_Medium_: for baking by pouring over crackers soaked in milk.
_Thick_: serves as a sort of Welsh Rabbit when poured generously over
bread toasted on one side only, with the untoasted side up, to let the
sauce sink in.
PARSLEYED CHEESE SAUCE
This makes a mild, pleasantly pungent sauce, to enliven the
cabbage family--hot cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels
sprouts. Croutons help when sprinkled over.
CORNUCOPIA OF CHEESE RECIPES
Since this is the Complete Book of Cheese we will fill a bounteous
cornucopia here with more or less essential, if not indispensable,
recipes and dishes not so easy to classify, or overlooked or crowded
out of the main sections devoted to the classic Fondues, Rabbits,
Soufflés, etc.
_Stuffed Celery, Endive, Anise and Other Suitable Stalks_
Use any soft cheese you like, or firm cheese softened by pressing
through a sieve; at room temperature, of course, with any seasoning or
relish.
SUGGESTIONS:
Cream cheese and chopped chives, pimientos, olives, or all three,
with or without a touch of Worcestershire.
Cottage cheese and piccalilli or chili sauce.
Sharp Cheddar mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, cream, minced
capers, pickles, or minced ham.
Roquefort and other Blues are excellent fillings for your
favorite vegetable stalk, or scooped-out dill pickle. This last
is specially nice when filled with snappy cheese creamed with
sweet butter.
All canapé butters are ideally suited to stuffing stalks.
Pineapple cheese, especially that part close to the
pineapple-flavored rind, is perfect when creamed.
A masterpiece in the line of filled stalks: Cut the leafy tops
off an entire head of celery, endive, anise or anything similarly
suitable. Wash and separate stalks, but keep them in order, to
reassemble in the head after each is stuffed with a different
mixture, using any of the above, or a tangy mix of your own
concoction.
After all stalks are filled, beginning with the baby center ones,
press them together in the form of the original head, tie tight,
and chill. When ready, slice in rolls about 8-inch thick and
arrange as a salad on a bed of water cress or lettuce, moistened
with French dressing.
Cold Dunking
Besides hot dunking in Swiss Fondue, cold dunking may be had by
moistening plenty of cream cheese with cream or lemon in a
dunking bowl. When the cheese is sufficiently liquefied, it is
liberally seasoned with chopped parsley, chives, onions, pimiento
and/or other relish. Then a couple of tins of anchovies are
macerated and stirred in, oil and all.
Cheese Charlotte
Line a baking dish from bottom to top with decrusted slices of
bread dipped in milk. Cream 1 tablespoon of sweet butter with 2
eggs and season before stirring in 2 cups of grated cheese. Bake
until golden brown in slow oven.
Straws
Roll pastry dough thin and cover with grated Cheddar, fold and
roll at least twice more, sprinkling with cheese each time. Chill
dough in refrigerator and cut in straw-size strips. Stiffly salt
a beaten egg yolk and glaze with that to give a salty taste. Bake
for several minutes until crisp.
Supa Shetgia[B]
[Footnote B: (from _Cheese Cookery_, by Helmut Ripperger)]
_This is the famous cheese soup of the Engadine and little known
in this country. One of its seasonings is nutmeg and until one
has used it in cheese dishes, it is hard to describe how
perfectly it gives that extra something. The recipe, as given,
is for each plate, but there is no reason why the old-fashioned
tureen could not be used and the quantities simply increased_.
Put a slice of stale French bread, toasted or not, into a soup
plate and cover it with 4 tablespoons of grated or shredded Swiss
cheese. Place another slice of bread on top of this and pour over
it some boiling milk. Cover the plate and let it stand for
several minutes. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Serve
topped with browned, hot butter. Use whole nutmeg and grate it
freshly.
WITH A CHEESE SHAKER ON THE TABLE
Italians are so dependent on cheese to enrich all their dishes, from
soups to spaghetti--and indeed any vegetable--that a shaker of grated
Parmesan, Romano or reasonable substitute stands ready at every table,
or is served freshly grated on a side dish. Thus any Italian soup
might be called a cheese soup, but we know of only one, the great
minestrone, in which cheese is listed as an indispensable ingredient
along with the pasta, peas, onion, tomatoes, kidney beans, celery,
olive oil, garlic, oregano, potatoes, carrots, and so forth.
Likewise, a chunk of melting or toasting cheese is essential in the
Fritto Misto, the finest mixed grill we know, and it's served up as a
separate tidbit with the meats.
Italians grate on more cheese for seasoning than any other people, as
the French are wont to use more wine in cooking.
Pfeffernüsse and Caraway
The gingery little "pepper nuts," _pfeffernüsse_, imported from
Germany in barrels at Christmastime, make one of the best
accompaniments to almost any kind of cheese. For contrast try a dish
of caraway.
Diablotins
Small rounds of buttered bread or toas
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