The Chemistry of Cookery

by W. Mattieu Williams

I have tested its digestibility by eating it heartily for supper. No nightmare has followed. If I sup on a corresponding quantity of raw cheese my sleep is miserably eventful.

A correspondent writes as follows from the Charlotte Square Young Ladies’ Institution: ‘I have been trying the various ways of cooking cheese mentioned in your articles in “Knowledge,” and have one or two improvements to suggest in the making of cheese pudding. I find the result is much better when the bread is grated like the cheese, and thoroughly mixed with it; then the batter poured over both. I think you will also find it better when baked in a shallow tin, such as is used for Yorkshire pudding. This gives more of the browned surface, which is the best of it. Another improvement is to put some of the crumbled bread (on paper) in the oven till brown, and eat with it (as for game). I have not succeeded in making any improvement in the fondu (see [page 139]), which is delightful.’

My recollections of the fondu of the Swiss peasant being so eminently satisfactory on all points—nutritive or sustaining value, appetising flavour and economy—I have sought for a recipe in several cookery-books, and find at last a near approach to it in an old edition of Mrs. Rundell’s ‘Domestic Cookery.’ A similar dish is described in that useful book ‘Cre-Fydd’s Family Fare,’ under the name of ‘Cheese Soufflé or Fondu.’[12] I had looked for it in more pretentious works, especially in the most pretentious and the most disappointing one I have yet been tempted to purchase, viz. the 27th edition of Francatelli’s ‘Modern Cook,’ a work which I cannot recommend to anybody who has less than 20,000l. a year and a corresponding luxury of liver.

Amidst all the culinary monstrosities of these ‘high-class’ manuals, I fail to find anything concerning the cookery of cheese that is worth the attention of my readers. Francatelli has, under the name of ‘Eggs à la Suisse,’ a sort of fondu, but decidedly inferior to the common fondu of the humble Swiss osteria, as Francatelli lays the eggs upon slices of cheese, and prescribes especially that the yolks shall not be broken; omits the milk, but substitutes (for high-class extravagance’ sake, I suppose) ‘a gill of double cream,’ to be poured over the top. Thus the cheese is not intermingled with the egg, lest it should spoil the appearance of the unbroken yolks, its casein is made leathery instead of being dissolved, and the substitution of sixpenny worth of double cream for a halfpenny worth of milk supplies the high-class victim with fivepence halfpenny worth of biliary derangement.

In Gouffé’s ‘Royal Cookery Book’ (the Household Edition of which contains a great deal that is really useful to an English housewife) I find a better recipe under the name of ‘Cheese Soufflés.’ He says: ‘Put two ounces and a quarter of flour in a stewpan, with one pint and a half of milk; season with salt and pepper; stew over the fire till boiling, and should there be any lumps, strain the soufflé paste through a tammy cloth; add seven ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and seven yolks of eggs; whip the whites till they are firm, and add them to the mixture; fill some paper cases with it, and bake in the oven for fifteen minutes.’

Cre-Fydd says: ‘Grate six ounces of rich cheese (Parmesan is the best); put it into an enamelled saucepan, with a teaspoonful of flour of mustard, a saltspoonful of white pepper, a grain of cayenne, the sixth part of a nutmeg, grated, two ounces of butter, two tablespoonfuls of baked flour, and a gill of new milk; stir it over a slow fire till it becomes like smooth, thick cream (but it must not boil); add the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, beat for ten minutes, then add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth; put the mixture into a tin or a cardboard mould, and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes. Serve immediately.’

Here is a true cookery of cheese by solution, and the result is an excellent dish. But there is some unnecessary complication and kitchen pedantry involved. The soufflé part of the business is a mere puffing up of the mixture for the purpose of displaying the cleverness of the cook, being quite useless to the consumer, as it subsides before it can be eaten. It further involves practical mischief, as it cannot be obtained without toasting the surface of the cheese into an air-tight leathery skin that is abnormally indigestible. The following is my own simplified recipe:

Take a quarter of a pound of grated cheese; add it to a gill of milk in which is dissolved as much powdered bicarbonate of potash as will stand upon a threepenny-piece; mustard, pepper, &c., as prescribed above by Cre-Fydd.[13] Heat this carefully until the cheese is completely dissolved. Then beat up three eggs, yolks and whites together, and add them to this solution of cheese, stirring the whole. Now take a shallow metal or earthenware dish or tray that will bear heating; put a little butter on this, and heat the butter till it frizzles. Then pour the mixture into the tray, and bake or fry it until it is nearly solidified.

A cheaper dish may be made by increasing the proportion of cheese—say, six to eight ounces to three eggs, or only one egg to a quarter of a pound of cheese for a hard-working man with powerful digestion.

Mr. E. D. Girdlestone writes as follows (I quote with permission): ‘As regards the “cheese fondu,” your recipe for which has enabled me to turn cheese to practical account as food, you may be glad to hear that it has become a common dish in our microscopic ménage. Indeed cheese, which formerly was poison to me, is now alike pleasant and digestible. But some of your readers may like to know that the addition of bread-crumbs is, in my judgment at least, a great improvement, giving greater lightness to the compost, and removing the harshness of flavour otherwise incidental to a mixture which comprises so large a proportion of cheese. We (my wife and I) think this a great improvement.’