Cheese Biscuits.
Some pie-paste.
Grated cheese.
1 beaten egg.
Pepper and salt.
Cayenne pepper, if you like.
Roll out the pastry thin; strew grated cheese, seasoned, over the whole sheet and roll it up tightly. Roll out again, even thinner than before; strew the rest of the cheese; roll up and set in a cold place, half an hour, until crisp. Roll again into a sheet, cut into squares or triangles with a cake-cutter, or your jagging-iron; prick with a fork, and bake very quickly in a hot oven. Brush with beaten egg before taking up, and sift raspings of cheese over the top, shutting up in the oven for an instant to glaze the biscuits. Serve at once, on a hot napkin.
These are, it will be seen, a modification of the “fingers,” and will be preferred by some. Of course, to those who object to cooked cheese as indigestible, none of the combinations that smell so appetizing and taste so savory, will be a temptation. Cayenne is said to make these more wholesome.
Cheese fondu.
(Delicious.)
1 cup bread-crumbs—very dry and fine.
2 scant cups of milk—rich and fresh, or it will curdle.
½ pound dry old cheese, grated.
3 eggs—whipped very light.
1 small table-spoonful melted butter.
Pepper and salt.
A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water and stirred into the milk.
Soak the crumbs in the milk; beat into these the eggs, the butter, seasoning, lastly the cheese. Butter a neat baking-dish; pour the fondu into it, strew dry bread-crumbs on the top, and bake in a rather quick oven until delicately browned. Serve immediately in the baking-dish, as it soon falls.
The day on which this cheese-pudding first appeared on my table is marked with a “very good.” It is a pretty, cheap and palatable entrée, such as you need never be ashamed to set before any guest, however fastidious.
Let me say, in this connection, in explanation not apology, for my running commentary upon receipts like the above, that it is made—the commentary, I mean, “with a purpose.” The unexpected guest is sometimes an embarrassment, sometimes a horror to the inexperienced housewife.
“I remembered the cold duck in the pantry with exceeding joy; summed up the contents of bread and cake box to a crumb, between the foot of the stairs and the front-door,” confessed one to me. “By the time I had said ‘How do you do?’ all around, and kissed the babies, I remembered, with a sick thrill, that the butter was low and the coffee out (we don’t drink it ourselves), and that the whole party of new-comers must, at that hour of the evening, be ravenously hungry.”
It is wise and provident to arm oneself against such occasions by practice in the manufacture of what may be called “surprise-dishes.” With a crust of cheese in the larder, half a loaf of dry bread, an egg, a few spoonfuls of milk and a bit of butter, one is tolerably armed against an unlooked-for and unseasonable arrival. Give the guest my fondu, with a good cup of coffee, or tea, or glass of ale; bread-and-butter, cut thin, and your brightest smile, and he will not complain, even inwardly, should the cold duck be wanting.