But, nevertheless, any one who examines cookery books of the time of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., will find that cheese was used in an infinity of ragouts, and that toasted cheese was placed in a liquid state on toast, with cinnamon, sugar, and aromatic spices. This was evidently an improvement on the old Welsh-rabbit, or rare-bit, which was so seldom well done, even at the Wrekin in Russell Court, Covent Garden, a house frequented by Edmund Kean in my younger days. Dr. King, in his “Art of Cookery,” thus speaks of toasted cheese:—
“Happy the man that has each fortune tried,
To whom she much has given and much denied;
With abstinence all delicate he sees,
And can regale himself on toasted cheese.”
Of caseous substances, Nonius says:—“Magna est differentia inter recentem et vetustum caseum. Recens enim et mollis, duratis et veteribus salubritatis caussa preferendus. Teste enim Dioscoride, magis alit, stomacho utilis, corpus auget, et facillime digeritur. Minus vero nutrit si sale aspersus fuerit et stomacho inutilis. Vetustos caseos Galenus damnat.”[21]
I have not said anything of the Schabzeiger cheese of Switzerland, or the Strachino of Milan, as there are few English people who relish anything so rank. Roquefort is a much finer cheese than either of them, but the consumption of Roquefort in England is singularly small.
