The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
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 20,000_l._ 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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