Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen. Christopher Hirst
‘Welsh’ part may have stemmed from that nation’s traditional fondness for cheese, which is alluded to in The Merry Wives of Windsor (the jealous Frank Ford declares: ‘I would rather trust…the Welshman with my cheese…than my wife with herself’), but it was probably also a joke against the Welsh. In the unremittingly carnivorous eighteenth century, Welsh rabbit was a substitute for the real thing, ersatz, a bit of a con. If the expression was originally pejorative, the Welsh have had the last laugh. Two other national variants in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), Scotch rabbit (pretty much plain cheese on toast) and English rabbit, have both failed to stay the course.
I decided to make English rabbit as the next volley in my campaign to retain the heart of Mrs H. Hannah Glasse’s recipe seems to derive from the medieval dish of sops, which is bits of bread soaked in wine. (In Richard III, one of the murderers of the Duke of Clarence says, ‘Let’s make a sop of him,’ before that gruesome business involving a butt of malmsey.) You pour a glass of red wine over a slice of brown toast ‘and let it soak the wine up; then cut some cheese very thin, and lay it very thick over the bread, and put it in a tin oven before the fire, and it will be toasted and brown’d presently. Serve it away hot.’ Made with Lancashire and Chianti, the snack, not quite as soggy as you might expect, proved to be a mystery mouthful for Mrs H. ‘I don’t know what the underneath is. Tell me. Tell me.’ I cruelly refused to say. Like most females, Mrs H cannot bear the withholding of information. ‘Tell me. Tell me! TELL ME!’
Eventually she twigged without me spilling the beans. ‘Is it something to do with wine?’ The dish caused a diversion of opinion. I thought it was an interesting combination of flavours, slightly like fondue, that delivered a nice, boozy aftertaste. Mrs H was unpersuaded. ‘Five out of ten. There’s a slight bitterness there that doesn’t entirely appeal. It’s middling.’
I then tried the Scotch rabbit recipe in Peter Graham’s Classic Cheese Cookery. This is entirely different from Hannah Glasse’s but it does have the merit of being authentically Scotch. It appeared in The Cook and Housewife’s Manual (1826) by Margaret Dods, the nom-de-plume of Christian Isabel Johnstone, a Peebles pub landlady. Using a cast-iron saucepan over a gentle heat, you stir together five ounces of Stilton (or Gouda) with four table spoons of stout (Graham recommends Mackeson but I used Guinness), one teaspoon of ready-made English mustard and a lot of black pepper. When transformed into a smooth cream, pour into ramekins and brown under a hot grill. Eat with hot buttered toast. ‘Quite nice,’ Mrs H hesitated. ‘A bit like dunking a biscuit in tea. It’s rather drippy. The Stilton is a bit odd.’ This was not quite the reaction that I was aiming for. She ate it all though.
Pushing my luck, I then made her another rarity from Graham’s book called Irish rarebit. He admits that this dish, which appeared in a First World War cookbook, has no obvious association with Ireland. ‘Perhaps the other nationalities had been used up,’ he suggests. A combination of grated Cheddar, fried sweet onions, chopped gherkins, fresh herbs and a reduction of ‘best vinegar’ (I used red wine vinegar) is cooked first in a frying pan and then grilled on toast. Unfortunately, it did not prove to be the food of love. Mrs H was alarmed by the smell (‘Poo!’) and dismayed by the taste. ‘What are we eating?’ This highly assertive dish was marginally better cold, when its acetic aggression had calmed down. Since cold, vinegary cheese on toast is not renowned as an aphrodisiac, I broadened my research.
The more you look into cheese on toast, the more possibilities you find. Food historian Dorothy Hartley suggested: ‘For a rich rabbit, fry the bread in bacon fat.’ I didn’t put that oily treat in front of Mrs H, but an anchovy-enhanced version from Patricia Michelson’s book The Cheese Room went down well. Entitled ‘A Sort of Welsh Rarebit’, the recipe specifies fillets from salted whole anchovies. These are excellent but somewhat hard to locate. I found standard anchovy fillets worked fine. You make anchovy butter, by mashing four anchovy fillets into two ounces of butter. Use it to butter some slices of toast. Pile thin slices of cheese (Michelson suggests Caerphilly) into a dome on the toast, splat on some Worcestershire sauce and grill until the cheese melts and turns gold. ‘Rather nice,’ said Mrs H. ‘Subtle, not too salty. Quite a revelation. I was expecting it to be a bit harsh but it’s not strong at all. Very impressive.’
She was even more impressed by a dipping version of cheese on toast. Lady Shaftesbury’s toasted cheese, which appears in Jane Grigson’s English Food, comes from the recipe book of the wife of the Victorian social reformer Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. However, the dish is not all that grand. ‘By the standards of the aristocracy they were poor.’ Intended to feed six, Lady Shaftesbury’s snack requires rather small quantities: two ounces of butter, seven ounces of grated Cheddar, six tablespoons of cream, two egg yolks, salt and pepper. Impossibly titchy, I thought, but the combination of dairy products is very rich. You don’t want much. (A food blogger who ate rather a lot of it reported nightmares.) The ingredients are mixed together in a saucepan and stirred over a low heat until dissolved into a thick cream. You then pour this into six small ovenproof dishes or ramekins and brown under the grill. Serve with toast fingers. Mrs H’s reaction: ‘Marvellous. Like an individual fondue. Hurray for Lady Shaftesbury!’ This was everything I could have hoped for, though I would have preferred ‘Hurray for Christopher.’
MY INVASION OF HER KITCHEN was a mixed blessing for Mrs H. Though she saw the advantage when she woke up to scrambled eggs and toast on Sunday mornings, there were a few minor drawbacks arising from my culinary activities. ‘There’s always a mountain of washing-up to be done after you’ve done any cooking,’ she pointed out. ‘And there are breadcrumbs everywhere and bits of kitchen roll. You put infinitesimal bits of cheese and butter back in the fridge and empty chutney jars back in the cupboard.’
I did, however, come in handy for replacing large casseroles on high shelves. It also became evident that my services were required when the lid of Mrs H’s elderly chest freezer was forced open by a build-up of pack ice. In my fine manly way, I demolished the ice wall with a wooden steak mallet. There were some comments about the small pools of water that resulted from ricocheting chunks, but I deemed it a job well done.
With surprising speed, the pack ice returned. One day when Mrs H was out at work, I decided that a more radical defrosting of the freezer was required. What was the use of having a man about the place unless he made himself useful? Besides, the cleaving of great lumps of ice from the walls of the freezer was vaguely satisfying. Now I realise that you’re not supposed to use a sharp metal object for defrosting freezers, but when did you hear of a snowplough with a wooden blade or an icebreaker with a plastic bow? This was serious, industrial-strength ice, the sort that did for the Titanic. After bending several of Mrs H’s utensils in the attempt, I found the most effective method of de-icing involved a hammer and chisel.
After dislodging a few berg-sized lumps, I gave a particularly hefty whack and the chisel clunked against the metal wall of the freezer. Worse still, there was the slight but unmistakable hiss of escaping gas. Despite my chilly location, I found myself perspiring freely. I discovered a quarter-inch gash in the side of the freezer. I put my finger over the hole like the Dutch boy and the dyke, and the hissing stopped. Though effective, I recognise that this provided only a temporary solution. In the long term, keeping my hand in the freezer would be a distinct hindrance to my social life. In the short term, my finger was beginning to turn numb. Leaving the ozone-munching chlorofluorocarbons to escape heavenwards, I dashed to the ironmonger’s for something to block the hole.
A tube of gunk called ‘Chemical Metal’ seemed the best bet. Though it made the inside of the freezer smell like a petrochemical plant, the hissing stopped. (It later occurred to me that chewing gum might have sufficed.) I closed the lid and hoped for the best. Peering at the crime scene on the following day, the signs were not good. The ice that had caused the problem in the first place had turned to slush and the long-frozen contents of the freezer were turning distinctly soggy. ‘Did…’ I remarked over breakfast as casually as possible, ‘I mention that I had a bit of an accident yesterday?’