2½ pounds sieved pot cheese
1-inch piece vanilla bean
¼ pound sweet butter, melted
½ small box graham crackers, crushed fine
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 small can crushed pineapple, drained
2 cups milk
⅓ cup flour
In a big bowl mix everything except the graham crackers and pineapple in the order given above. Butter a square Pyrex pan and put in the graham-cracker dust to make,a crust. Cover this evenly with the pineapple and pour in the cheese-custard mixture. Bake I hour in a "quiet" oven, as the English used to say for a moderate one, and when done set aside for 12 hours before eating.
Because of the time and labor involved maybe you had better buy your cheese cakes, even though some of the truly fine ones cost a dime a bite, especially the pedigreed Jewish-American ones in Manhattan. Reuben's and Lindy's are two leaders at about five dollars a cake. Some are fruited with cherries or strawberries.
picture: pointer Cheese Custard
4 eggs, slightly beaten
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
A dash of pepper or paprika
3 tablespoons melted butter
A few drops of onion juice, if desired
4 tablespoons grated Swiss (imported)
Mix all together, set in molds in pan of hot water, and bake until brown.
picture: pointer Open-faced Cheese Pie
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 pounds soft smearcase
Whip everything together and fill two pie crusts. Bake without any upper crust.
The Apple-pie Affinity
Hot apple pie was always accompanied with cheese in New England, even as every slice of apple pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick, according to law. Pioneer hot pies were baked in brick ovens and flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon and rose geranium. The cheese was Cheddar, but today all sorts of pie and cheese combinations are common, such as banana pie and Gorgonzola, mince with Danish Blue, pumpkin with cream cheese, peach pie with Hablé, and even a green dusting of Sapsago over raisin pie.
Apple pie au gratin, thickly grated over with Parmesan, Caciocavallo or Sapsago, is something special when served with black coffee. Cider, too, or applejack, is a natural accompaniment to any dessert of apple with its cheese.
picture: pointer Apple Pie Adorned
Apple pie is adorned with cream and cheese by pressing cream cheese through a ricer and folding in plenty of double cream beaten thick and salted a little. Put the mixture in a pastry tube and decorate top of pie in fanciful fashion.
picture: pointer Apple Pie á la Cheese
Lay a slice of melting cheese on top of apple (or any fruit or berry) pie, and melt under broiler 2 to 3 minutes.
picture: pointer Cheese-crusty Apple Pie
In making an apple pie, roll out the top crust and sprinkle with sharp Cheddar, grated, dot with butter and bake golden-brown.
picture: pointer Flan au Fromage
To make this Franche-Comté tart of crisp paste, simply mix coarsely grated Gruyère with beaten egg, fill the tart cases and bake.
For any cheese pastry or fruit and custard pie crusts, work in tasty shredded sharp Cheddar in the ratio of 1 to 4 parts of flour.
picture: pointer Christmas Cake Sandwiches
A traditional Christmas carol begs for:
For a festive handout cut the spice cake or fruit cake in slices and sandwich them with slices of tasty cheese between.
To maintain traditional Christmas cheer for the elders, serve apple pie with cheese and applejack.
picture: pointer Angelic Camembert
1 ripe Camembert, imported
1 cup Anjou dry white wine
½ pound sweet butter, softened
2 tablespoons finely grated toast crumbs
Lightly scrape all crusty skin from the Camembert and when its creamy interior stands revealed put it in a small, round covered dish, pour in the wine, cover tightly so no bouquet or aroma can possibly escape, and let stand overnight.
When ready to serve drain off and discard any wine left, dry the cheese and mash with the sweet butter into an angelic paste. Reshape in original Camembert form, dust thickly with the crumbs and there you are.
Such a delicate dessert is a favorite with the ladies, since some of them find a prime Camembert a bit too strong if taken straight.
Although A. W. Fulton's observation in For Men Only is going out of date, it is none the less amusing:
In the course of a somewhat varied career I have only met one woman who appreciated cheese. This quality in her seemed to me so deserving of reward that I did not hesitate to acquire her hand in marriage.
Another writer has said that "only gourmets among women seem to like cheese, except farm women and foreigners." The association between gourmets and farm women is borne out by the following urgent plea from early Italian landowners:
Having found out for ourselves, we suggest a golden slice of Taleggio, Stracchino, or pale gold Bel Paese to polish off a good dinner, with a juicy Lombardy pear or its American equivalent, a Bartlett, let us say.
This celestial association of cheese and pears is further accented by the French:
This places the cheese after the fruit, as the last course, in accordance with early English usage set down by John Clarke in his Paroemiologia:
But in his Epigrams Ben Jonson serves them together.
That brings us back to cheese and pippins:
When should the cheese be served? In England it is served before or after the fruit, with or without the port.
Following The Book of Keruynge in modern spelling we note when it was published in 1431 the proper thing "after meat" was "pears, nuts, strawberries, whortleberries (American huckle berries) and hard cheese." In modern practice we serve some suitable cheese like Camembert directly on slices of apple and pears, Gorgonzola on sliced banana, Hablé spread on pineapple and a cheese dessert tray to match the Lazy Lou, with everything crunchy down to Crackerjacks. Good, too, are figs, both fresh and preserved, stuffed with cream cheese, kumquats, avocados, fruity dunking mixtures of Pineapple cheese, served in the scooped-out casque of the cheese itself, and apple or pear and Provolone creamed and put back in the rind it came in. Pots of liquored and wined cheeses, no end, those of your own making being the best.
picture: pointer Champagned Roquefort or Gorgonzola
½ pound mellow Roquefort
¼ pound sweet butter, softened
A dash cayenne
¾ cup champagne
With a silver fork mix cheese and butter to a smooth paste, moistening with champagne as you go along, using a little more or less champagne according to consistency desired. Serve with the demitasse and cognac, offering, besides crackers, gilt gingerbread in the style of Holland Dutch cheese tasters, or just plain bread.
After dinner cheeses suggested by Phil Alpert are:
FROM FRANCE: Port-Salut, Roblochon, Coulommiers, Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, Calvados (try it with a spot of Calvados, apple brandy)
FROM THE U.S.: Liederkranz, Blue, Cheddar
FROM SWEDEN: Hablé Crême Chantilly
FROM ITALY: Taleggio, Gorgonzola, Provolone, Bel Paese
FROM HUNGARY: Kascaval
FROM SWITZERLAND: Swiss Gruyère
FROM GERMANY: Kümmelkäse
FROM NORWAY: Gjetost, Bondost
FROM HOLLAND: Edam, Gouda
FROM ENGLAND: Stilton
FROM POLAND: Warshawski Syr
He who says au gratin says Parmesan. Thomas Gray, the English poet, saluted it two centuries ago with:
On September 4, 1666, Pepys recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan, "as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W. Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his Diary of a Country Parson wrote:
I sent Mr. Custance about 3 doz. more of apricots, and he sent me back another large piece of fine Parmesan cheese. It was very kind of him.
The second most popular cheese for au gratin is Italian Romano, and, for an entirely different flavor, Swiss Sapsago. The French, who gave us this cookery term, use it in its original meaning for any dish with a browned topping, usually of bread crumbs, or crumbs and cheese. In America we think of au gratin as grated cheese only, although Webster says, "with a browned covering, often mixed with butter or cheese; as, potatoes au gratin." So let us begin with that.
picture: pointer Potatoes au Gratin
2 cups diced cooked potatoes
2 tablespoons grated onion
½ cup grated American Cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup milk
1 egg
Salt
Pepper
More grated cheese for covering
In a buttered baking dish put a layer of diced potatoes, sprinkle with onion and bits of butter. Next, scatter on a thin layer of cheese and alternate with potatoes, onions and butter. Stir milk, egg, salt and pepper together and pour it on the mixture. Top everything with plenty of grated cheese to make it authentically American au gratin. Bake until firm in moderate oven, about ½ hour.
picture: pointer Eggs au Gratin
Make a white sauce flavored with minced onion to pour over any desired number of eggs broken into a buttered baking dish. Begin by using half of the sauce and sprinkling on a lot of grated cheese. After the eggs are in, pour on the rest of the sauce, cover it with grated cheese and bread crumbs, drop in bits of butter, and cook until brown in oven (or about 12 minutes).
picture: pointer Tomatoes au Gratin
Cover bottom of shallow baking pan with slices of tomato and sprinkle liberally with bread crumbs and grated cheese, season with salt, pepper and dots of butter, add another layer of tomato slices, season as before and continue this, alternating with cheese, until pan is full. Add a generous topping of crumbs, cheese and butter. Bake 50 minutes in moderate oven.
picture: pointer Onion Soup au Gratin
4 or 5 onions, sliced
4 or 5 tablespoons butter
1 quart stock or canned consommé
1 quart bouillon made from dissolving 4 or 5 cubes
Rounds of toasted French bread
1½ cups grated Parmesan cheese
Sauté onions in butter in a roomy saucepan until light golden, and pour the stock over. When heated put in a larger casserole, add the bouillon, season to taste and heat to boiling point. Let simmer 15 minutes and serve in deep well-heated soup plates, the bottoms covered with rounds of toasted French bread which have been heaped with freshly grated Parmesan and browned under the broiler. More cheese is served for guests to sprinkle on as desired.
At gala parties, where wine flows, a couple of glasses of champagne are often added to the bouillon.
In the famed onion soup au gratin at Les Halles in Paris, grated Gruyère is used in place of Parmesan. They are interchangeable in this recipe.
In this era of fine canned soups a quick cheese soup is made by heating cream of tomato soup, ready made, and adding finely grated Swiss or Parmesan to taste. French bread toasted and topped with more cheese and broiled golden makes the best base to pour this over, as is done with the French onion soup above.
The same cheese toasts are the basis of a simple milk-cheese soup, with heated milk poured over and a seasoning of salt, pepper, chopped chives, or a dash of nutmeg.
picture: pointer Chicken Cheese Soup
Heat together 1 cup milk, 1 cup water in which 2 chicken bouillon cubes have been dissolved, and 1 can of condensed cream of chicken soup. Stir in ¼ cup grated American Cheddar cheese and season with salt, pepper, and plenty of paprika until cheese melts.
Other popular American recipes simply add grated cheese to lima bean or split bean soup, peanut butter soup, or plain cheese soup with rice.
Imported French marmites are de rigueur for a real onion soup au gratin, and an imported Parmesan grinder might be used for freshly ground cheese. In preparing, it is well to remember that they are basically only melted cheese, melted from the top down.
picture: pointer Green Cheese Salad Julienne
Take endive, water cress and as many different kinds of crisp lettuce as you can find and mix well with Provolone cheese cut in thin julienne strips and marinated 3 to 4 hours in French dressing. Crumble over the salad some Blue cheese and toss everything thoroughly, with plenty of French dressing.
picture: pointer American Cheese Salad
Slice a sweet ripe pineapple thin and sprinkle with shredded American Cheddar. Serve on lettuce dipped in French dressing.
picture: pointer Cheese and Nut Salad
Mix American Cheddar with an equal amount of nut meats and enough mayonnaise to make a paste. Roll these in little balls and serve with fruit salads, dusting lightly with finely grated Sapsago.
picture: pointer Brie or Camembert Salad
Fill ripe pear-or peach-halves with creamy imported Brie or Camembert, sprinkle with honey, serve on lettuce drenched with French dressing and scatter shredded almonds over. (Cream cheese will do in a pinch. If the Camembert isn't creamy enough, mash it with some sweet cream.)
picture: pointer Three-in-One Mold
¾ cup cream cheese
½ cup grated American Cheddar cheese
½ cup Roquefort cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons gelatin, dissolved and stirred into
½ cup boiling water
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt
Pepper
2 cups cream, beaten stiff
½ cup minced chives
Mash the cheeses together, season gelatin liquid with lemon, salt and pepper and stir into cheese with the whipped cream. Add chives last Put in ring mold or any mold you fancy, chill well and slice at table to serve on lettuce with a little mayonnaise, or plain.
picture: pointer Swiss Cheese Salad
Dice ½ pound of cheese into ½-inch cubes. Slice one onion very thin. Mix well in a soup plate. Dash with German mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce. Salt lightly and grind in plenty of black pepper. Then stir, preferably with a wooden spoon so you won't mash the cheese, until every hole is drenched with the dressing.
picture: pointer Rosie's Swiss Breakfast Cheese Salad
Often Emmentaler is cubed in a salad for breakfast, relished specially by males on the morning after. We quote the original recipe brought over by Rosie from the Swiss Tyrol to thrill the writers' and artists' colony of Ridgefield, New Jersey, in her brother Emil's White House Inn:
First Rosie cut a thick slice of prime imported Emmentaler into half-inch cubes. Then she mixed imported French olive oil, German mustard and Swiss white wine vinegar with salt and freshly ground pepper in a deep soup plate, sprinkled on a few drops of pepper sauce scattered in the chunks of Schweizer and stirred the cubes with a light hand, using a wooden fork and spoon to prevent bruising.
The salad was ready to eat only when each and every tiny, shiny cell of the Swiss from the homeland had been washed, oiled and polished with the soothing mixture.
"Drink down the juice, too, when you have finished mine Breakfast Cheese Salad," Rosie advised the customers. "It is the best cure in the world for the worst hangover."
picture: pointer Gorgonzola and Banana Salad
Slice bananas lengthwise, as for a banana split. Sprinkle with lemon juice and spread with creamy Gorgonzola. Sluice with French dressing made with lemon juice in place of vinegar, to help bring out the natural banana flavor of ripe Gorgonzola.
picture: pointer Cheese and Pea Salad
Cube ½ pound of American Cheddar and mix with a can of peas, 1 cup of diced celery, 1 cup of mayonnaise, ½ cup of sour cream, and 2 tablespoons each of minced pimientos and sweet pickles. Serve in lettuce cups with a sprinkling of parsley and chopped radishes.
picture: pointer Apple and Cheese Salad
½ cup cream cheese
1 cup chopped pecans
Salt and pepper
Apples, sliced ½-inch thick
Lettuce leaves
Creamy salad dressing
Make tiny seasoned cheese balls, center on the apple slices standing on lettuce leaves, and sluice with creamy salad dressing.
picture: pointer Roquefort Cheese Salad Dressing
No cheese sauce is easier to make than the American favorite of Roquefort cheese mashed with a fork and mixed with French dressing. It is often made in a pint Mason jar and kept in the refrigerator to shake up on occasion and toss over lettuce or other salads.
Unfortunately, even when the Roquefort is the French import, complete with the picture of the sheep in red, and garanti véritable, the dressing is often ruined by bad vinegar and cottonseed oil (of all things). When bottled to sell in stores, all sorts of extraneous spice, oils and mustard flour are used where nothing more is necessary than the manipulation of a fork, fine olive oil and good vinegar—white wine, tarragon or malt. Some ardent amateurs must have their splash of Worcestershire sauce or lemon juice with salt and pepper. This Roquefort dressing is good on all green salads, but on endive it's something special.
Sauce Mornay has been hailed internationally as "the greatest culinary achievement in cheese."
Nothing is simpler to make. All you do is prepare a white sauce (the French Sauce Béchamel) and add grated Parmesan to your liking, stirring it in until melted and the sauce is creamy. This can be snapped up with cayenne or minced parsley, and when used with fish a little of the cooking broth is added.
picture: pointer Plain Cheese Sauce
1 part of any grated cheese to 4 parts of white sauce
This is a mild sauce that is nice with creamed or hard-cooked eggs. When the cheese content is doubled, 2 parts of cheese to 4 of white sauce, it is delicious on boiled cauliflower, baked potatoes, macaroni and crackers soaked in milk.
The sauce may be made richer by mixing melted butter with the flour in making the white sauce, or by beating egg yolk in with the cheese.
From thin to medium to thick it serves divers purposes:
Thin: it may be used instead of milk to make a tasty milk toast, sometimes spiced with curry.
Medium: for baking by pouring over crackers soaked in milk.
Thick: serves as a sort of Welsh Rabbit when poured generously over bread toasted on one side only, with the untoasted side up, to let the sauce sink in.
picture: pointer Parsleyed Cheese Sauce
This makes a mild, pleasantly pungent sauce, to enliven the cabbage family—hot cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Croutons help when sprinkled over.
Since this is the Complete Book of Cheese we will fill a bounteous cornucopia here with more or less essential, if not indispensable, recipes and dishes not so easy to classify, or overlooked or crowded out of the main sections devoted to the classic Fondues, Rabbits, Soufflés, etc.
Stuffed Celery, Endive, Anise and Other Suitable
Stalks
Use any soft cheese you like, or firm cheese softened by pressing through a sieve; at room temperature, of course, with any seasoning or relish.
SUGGESTIONS:
Cream cheese and chopped chives, pimientos, olives, or all three, with or without a touch of Worcestershire.
Cottage cheese and piccalilli or chili sauce.
Sharp Cheddar mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, cream, minced capers, pickles, or minced ham.
Roquefort and other Blues are excellent fillings for your favorite vegetable stalk, or scooped-out dill pickle. This last is specially nice when filled with snappy cheese creamed with sweet butter.
All canapé butters are ideally suited to stuffing stalks. Pineapple cheese, especially that part close to the pineapple-flavored rind, is perfect when creamed.
A masterpiece in the line of filled stalks: Cut the leafy tops off an entire head of celery, endive, anise or anything similarly suitable. Wash and separate stalks, but keep them in order, to reassemble in the head after each is stuffed with a different mixture, using any of the above, or a tangy mix of your own concoction.
After all stalks are filled, beginning with the baby center ones, press them together in the form of the original head, tie tight, and chill. When ready, slice in rolls about 8-inch thick and arrange as a salad on a bed of water cress or lettuce, moistened with French dressing.
picture: pointer Cold Dunking
Besides hot dunking in Swiss Fondue, cold dunking may be had by moistening plenty of cream cheese with cream or lemon in a dunking bowl. When the cheese is sufficiently liquefied, it is liberally seasoned with chopped parsley, chives, onions, pimiento and/or other relish. Then a couple of tins of anchovies are macerated and stirred in, oil and all.
picture: pointer Cheese Charlotte
Line a baking dish from bottom to top with decrusted slices of bread dipped in milk. Cream 1 tablespoon of sweet butter with 2 eggs and season before stirring in 2 cups of grated cheese. Bake until golden brown in slow oven.
picture: pointer Straws
Roll pastry dough thin and cover with grated Cheddar, fold and roll at least twice more, sprinkling with cheese each time. Chill dough in refrigerator and cut in straw-size strips. Stiffly salt a beaten egg yolk and glaze with that to give a salty taste. Bake for several minutes until crisp.
picture: pointer Supa Shetgia [B]
This is the famous cheese soup of the Engadine and little known in this country. One of its seasonings is nutmeg and until one has used it in cheese dishes, it is hard to describe how perfectly it gives that extra something. The recipe, as given, is for each plate, but there is no reason why the old-fashioned tureen could not be used and the quantities simply increased.
Put a slice of stale French bread, toasted or not, into a soup plate and cover it with 4 tablespoons of grated or shredded Swiss cheese. Place another slice of bread on top of this and pour over it some boiling milk. Cover the plate and let it stand for several minutes. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Serve topped with browned, hot butter. Use whole nutmeg and grate it freshly.
[B] (from Cheese Cookery, by Helmut Ripperger)
Italians are so dependent on cheese to enrich all their dishes, from soups to spaghetti—and indeed any vegetable—that a shaker of grated Parmesan, Romano or reasonable substitute stands ready at every table, or is served freshly grated on a side dish. Thus any Italian soup might be called a cheese soup, but we know of only one, the great minestrone, in which cheese is listed as an indispensable ingredient along with the pasta, peas, onion, tomatoes, kidney beans, celery, olive oil, garlic, oregano, potatoes, carrots, and so forth.
Likewise, a chunk of melting or toasting cheese is essential in the Fritto Misto, the finest mixed grill we know, and it's served up as a separate tidbit with the meats.
Italians grate on more cheese for seasoning than any other people, as the French are wont to use more wine in cooking.
picture: pointer Pfeffernüsse and Caraway
The gingery little "pepper nuts," pfeffernüsse, imported from Germany in barrels at Christmastime, make one of the best accompaniments to almost any kind of cheese. For contrast try a dish of caraway.
Small rounds of buttered bread or toast heaped with a mound of grated cheese and browned in the oven is a French contribution.
picture: pointer Cheddar Omelet
Make a plain omelet your own way. When the mixture has
just begun to cook, dust over it evenly ½ cup grated
Cheddar.
(a) Use young Cheddar if you want a mild, bland
omelet.
(b) Use sharp, aged Cheddar for a full-flavored one.
(c) Sprinkle (b) with Worcestershire sauce to make what
might be called a Wild Omelet.
Cook as usual. Fold and serve.
picture: pointer Parmesan Omelet (mild)
Cook as above, but use ¼ cup only of Parmesan, grated fine, in place of the ½ cup Cheddar.
picture: pointer Parmesan Omelet (full flavored)
As above, but use ½ cup Parmesan, finely grated, as follows: Sift ¼ cup of the Parmesan into your egg mixture at the beginning and dust on the second ¼ cup evenly, just as the omelet begins to set.
picture: pointer A Meal-in-One Omelet
Fry ½ dozen bacon slices crisp and keep hot while frying a cup of diced, boiled potatoes in the bacon fat, to equal crispness. Meanwhile make your omelet mixture of 3 eggs, beaten, and 1½ tablespoons of shredded Emmentaler (or domestic Swiss) with 1 tablespoon of chopped chives and salt and pepper to taste.
picture: pointer Tomato and
Make plain omelet, cover with thin rounds of fresh tomato and dust well with any grated cheese you like. Put under broiler until cheese melts to a golden brown.
picture: pointer Omelet with Cheese Sauce
Make a plain French, fluffy or puffy omelet and when finished, cover with a hot, seasoned, reinforced white sauce in which ¼ pound of shredded cheese has been melted, and mixed well with ½ cup cooked, diced celery and 1 tablespoon of pimiento, minced.
The French use grated Gruyère for this with all sorts of sauces, such as the Savoyar de Savoie, with potatoes, chervil, tarragon and cream. A delicious appearance and added flavor can be had by browning with a salamander.
picture: pointer Spanish Flan—Quesillo
FOR THE CARAMEL:
½ cup sugar
4 tablespoons water
FOR THE FLAN:
4 eggs, beaten separately
2 cups hot milk
½ cup sugar
Salt
Brown sugar and mix with water to make the caramel. Pour it into a baking mold.
Make Flan by mixing together all the ingredients. Add to carameled mold and bake in pan of water in moderate oven about ¾ hour.
picture: pointer Italian Fritto Misto
The distinctive Italian Mixed Fry, Fritto Misto, is made with whatever fish, sweetbreads, brains, kidneys, or tidbits of meat are at hand, say a half dozen different cubes of meat and giblets, with as many hearts of artichokes, finocchi, tomato, and different vegetables as you can find, but always with a hunk of melting cheese, to fork out in golden threads with each mouthful of the mixture.
picture: pointer Polish Piroghs (a pocketful of cheese)
Make noodle dough with 2 eggs and 2 cups of flour, roll out very thin and cut in 2-inch squares.
Cream a cupful of cottage cheese with a tablespoon of melted butter, flavor with cinnamon and toss in a handful of seedless currents.
Fill pastry squares with this and pinch edges tight together to make little pockets.
Drop into a lot of fast-boiling water, lightly salted, and boil steadily 30 minutes, lowering the heat so the pockets won't burst open.
Drain and serve on a piping hot platter with melted butter and a sprinkling of bread crumbs.
This is a cross between ravioli and blintzes.
picture: pointer Cheesed Mashed Potatoes
Whip into a steaming hot dish of creamily mashed potatoes some old Cheddar with melted butter and a crumbling of crisp, cooked bacon.
If there's a chafing dish handy, a first-rate nightcap can be made via a
picture: pointer Sautéed Swiss Sandwich
Tuck a slice of Swiss cheese between two pieces of thickly buttered bread, trim crusts, cut sandwich in two, surround it with one well-beaten egg, slide it into sizzling butter and fry on both sides. A chef at the New York Athletic Club once improved on this by first sandwiching the Swiss between a slice of ham and a slice of chicken breast, then beating up a brace of eggs with a jigger of heavy sweet cream and soaking his sandwich in this until it sopped up every drop. A final frying in sweet butter made strong men cry for it.
In America cheese got its start in country stores in our cracker-barrel days when every man felt free to saunter in, pick up the cheese knife and cut himself a wedge from the big-bellied rattrap cheese standing under its glass bell or wire mesh hood that kept the flies off but not the free-lunchers. Cheese by itself being none too palatable, the taster would saunter over to the cracker barrel, shoo the cat off and help himself to the old-time crackers that can't be beat today.
At that time Wisconsin still belonged to the Indians and Vermont was our leading cheese state, with its Sage and Cheddar and Vermont Country Store Crackers, as Vrest Orton of Weston Vermont, calls them. When Orton heard we were writing this book, he sent samples from the store his father started in 1897 which is still going strong. Together with the Vermont Good Old-fashioned Natural Cheese and the Sage came a handy handmade Cracker Basket, all wicker, ten crackers long and just one double cracker wide. A snug little casket for those puffy, old-time, two-in-one soda biscuits that have no salt to spoil the taste of the accompanying cheese. Each does double duty because it's made to split in the middle, so you can try one kind of cheese on one half and another on t'other, or sandwich them between.
Some Pied Piper took the country cheese and crackers to the corner saloon and led a free-lunch procession that never faltered till Prohibition came. The same old store cheese was soon pepped up as saloon cheese with a saucer of caraway seeds, bowls of pickles, peppers, pickled peppers and rye bread with plenty of mustard, pretzels or cheese straws, smearcase and schwarzbrot. Beer and cheese forever together, as in the free-lunch ditty of that great day:
It was there and then that cheese came of age from coast to coast. In every bar there was a choice of Swiss, Cottage, Limburger—manly cheeses, walkie-talkie oldsters that could sit up and beg, golden yellow, tangy mellow, always cut in cubes. Cheese takes the cube form as naturally as eggs take the oval and honeycombs the hexagon.
On the more elegant handout buffets, besides the shapely cubes, free Welsh Rabbit started at four every afternoon, to lead the tired businessman in by the nose; or a smear of Canadian Snappy out of a pure white porcelain pot in the classy places, on a Bent's water biscuit.
Next to nibbling cheese with crackers and appetizers, of which there is no end in sight, cheese sandwiches help us consume most of our country's enormous output of Brick, Cheddar and Swiss. To attempt to classify and describe all of these would be impossible, so we will content ourselves by picking a few of the cold and hot, the plain and the fancy, the familiar and the exotic. Let's use the alphabet to sum up the situation.
A Alpine Club Sandwich
Spread toasts with mayonnaise and fill with a thick slice of imported Emmentaler, well-mustarded and seasoned, and the usual club-sandwich toppings of thin slices of chicken or turkey, tomato, bacon and a lettuce leaf.
B Boston Beany, Open-face
Lightly butter a slice of Boston brown bread, cover it generously with hot baked beans and a thick layer of shredded Cheddar. Top with bacon and put under a slow broiler until cheese melts and the bacon crisps.
C Cheeseburgers
Pat out some small seasoned hamburgers exceedingly thin and, using them instead of slices of bread, sandwich in a nice slice of American Cheddar well covered with mustard. Crimp edges of the hamburgers all around to hold in the cheese when it melts and begins to run. Toast under a brisk boiler and serve on soft, toasted sandwich buns.
D Deviled Rye
Butter flat Swedish rye bread and heat quickly in hot oven. Cool until crisp again. Then spread thickly with cream cheese, bedeviled with catsup, paprika or pimiento.
E Egg, Open-faced