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Title: The Complete Book of Cheese

Author: Robert Carlton Brown

Release Date: December 7, 2004 [EBook #14293]

Language: English

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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 Khys 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 cro