The culinary paradox of cheese: Unifier in heat, counterpoint in cold

“ Cheese is nutritious and, even at present prices, economical, as it contains a large proportion of protein in concentrated form. It can be successfully combined with many other foods, and every left-over bit should be so used; when partly dry it should be put through the food chopper, using a fine cutter; when very dry it should be grated and used in sauces, soufflés, soups, and many other dishes. Cheese is more readily digested if a pinch of baking soda is cooked with it. To keep cheese moist and fresh, brush the cut surface with melted paraffin. ”

“ In large quantities it may take the place in food value of the meat dish. It must, of course, be served in combination with vegetables or cereal food to supply the proper bulk.
Cheese contains protein and fat. It builds tissue and creates heat and energy. For variety it may occasionally be served as the main food for a meal—and adds zest when used in salads and other table specialties.
In fuel value, one pound of cheese is equal to three and one-third pounds of baked beans—or three quarts of whole milk, twenty-five average size eggs, or of peanut butter approximately three-fourths pounds. ”

“ The basis of cheese is casein or coagulated curd, a protein substance; it therefore cannot fail to prove nutritious, provided it is properly digested. Cheese-curd, carefully freed from water and milk by expression, and the addition of salt, is a mixture of casein and butter. It contains all the phosphate of lime and part of the phosphate of soda of the milk. (Liebig.) When taken as a condiment, especially when rich and old, it powerfully promotes the secretion of the saliva and gastric juice, and thereby aids the stomach in performing its proper functions. Rotten cheese is very unwholesome. ”

“ Celery and Onion Rabbit
1⁄2 cup chopped hearts of celery
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
11⁄2 cups grated sharp cheese
Salt and pepper
In a separate pan boil celery and onion until tender. Meanwhile, melt cheese with butter and seasonings and stir steadily. When nearly done stir the celery and onion in gradually, until smooth and creamy.
Pour over buttered toast and brown with a salamander or under the grill.
Asparagus Rabbit
Make as above, substituting a cupful of tender sliced asparagus tops for the celery and onion. ”

“ Continue alternate layers till you pile up the dish, taking care to have a layer of dried bread-crumbs at the top. Warm some butter, but do not oil it, and pour some of this warm butter over the top of the dish to moisten them; put the dish in the oven till it is hot through, then take it out and brown the top quickly with a red-hot salamander. If you leave the macaroni cheese in the oven too long the dish will taste oily and the cheese get so hard as to become absolutely indigestible. ”

“ Tomatoes and lettuce go well together, and onions are a good addition.
Potato salad requires firm round little potatoes cooked, cold, and cut into slices. The best kind is known as Hamburg Potatoes, and they may be had at the German Delikatessen shops. Avoid anchovies and olives with potato salad, but encourage chives and a sprinkling of cheese.
Celeriac.
This is a variety of celery, sometimes known as Dutch celery, a tuber which has a quite peculiar and characteristic flavour. It needs no addition whatever, and is an excellent accompaniment to all meats. ”

“ Cheese and Celery Salad Select celery stalks with deep grooves in them; wash and dry on clean towel. Mix a small cream cheese with a bit of salt, and 1⁄4 cup finely chopped nuts (pecans are best) . Fill grooves in celery stalk with the cheese mixture and chill. When ready to serve cut 167stalks into small pieces with sharp knife. Serve on lettuce leaves with French dressing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then pour in the kirsch, stir steadily and invite guests to dunk their forked bread in the dish or in a smaller preheated casserole over a low electric or alcohol burner on the dining table. The trick is to keep the bubbling melted cheese in rhythmic motion with the fork, both up and down and around and around.
The dunkers stab the hunks of crusty French bread through the soft part to secure a firm hold in the crust, for if your bread comes off in dunking you pay a forfeit, often a bottle of wine. ”

“ Raw vegetables, such as carrots, zucchini or celery sticks.
CHICKEN CHEESE FONDUE 1 6 oz. Emmenthaler cheese 1 6 oz. Gruyere cheese 1 tablespoon potato flour or cornstarch 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup 1 teaspoon pressed garlic 2 teaspoons curry powder 1⁄2 teaspoon powdered ginger 1⁄4 teaspoon white pepper 1⁄2 cup sour cream
Toss cheese with flour or cornstarch. Heat soup, garlic and seasonings and stir to blend well. Add cheese a handful at a time. When cheeses are melted blend in sour cream. Adjust seasonings. Reduce heat. Serve with crackers or chips. ”

“ Cheese is a good and nourishing food for cold weather, perhaps because it contains so much of that essential oil that we need. Toasted cheese should never be given to anyone of weak digestion, however, for it is one of the most difficult of all things to deal with. ”

“ There is a vast amount of fall made cheese that comes to grief through insufficient scalding. If you do not bake a loaf of bread thoroughly, you have a doughy and unpalatable article of food, and if curd is not cooked until it has passed the raw state, it will retain a certain quantity of whey and damage the product on the shelves. ”

“ See that every day's curd—the product of milk in all stages of maturity—does not part with the whey until it is cooked to a state of contractibility in which the cubes will separate by expansion after pressure by squeezing in the hand. No maker considers his bread free from rawness until it has received a certain amount of heat in the oven, and no cheese maker can expect to get a mellow, firm cheese unless he cooks his curd as above described. By using the smallest amount of heat possible to cook curd within a reasonable time, a finer quality of cheese is secured and a better yield. ”

“ The idea that it makes the cheese more buttery to dip the curd raw, seems to us very absurd. If there is any time when a curd needs to be thoroughly cooked, it is when the weather is cool and unfavorable for curing. If the whey is not properly expelled by the action of heat, it has got to either dry out or leak out, or both. If there is too much left in the curd to dry out, long before it can leak out, your cheese will be sour, with a puckered face, and sundry ugly cracks. ”

“ Slice firm, ripe tomatoes to match the sizes of the bread slices; broil the tomatoes just a wee bit, and then lay a slice on each piece of the French bread. Season them with pepper and salt, scatter grated Parmesan cheese over them, spread them with a layer of fine bread-crumbs moistened with melted butter. Brown in a hot oven and serve piping hot. And if the man o’ the house is the right sort you will get a vote of thanks in the shape of a big bunch of the earliest and brightest chrysanthemums to be found in town. ”

“ When this is done, the potato border has an appearance similar in colour to the rich pastry generally seen outside a pie, or vol au vent. The inside of the potato border after it has been scooped out can be filled with plain boiled macaroni mixed with Parmesan cheese, and ornamented with a little chopped parsley on the top and a few small baked red ripe tomatoes. Again, it can be filled with white haricot beans piled up in the shape of a dome, with some chopped parsley sprinkled over the top. ”

“ Cover frying pan with buttered papers, put slices of bread on this and cover with the cheese mixture. Cook about 5 minutes, take it off and brown it with a salamander.
There are two schools of salamandering among turophiles. One holds that it toughens the cheese and makes it less digestible; the other that it's simply swell. Some of the latter addicts have special cheese-branding irons made with their monograms, to identify their creations, whether they be burned on the skins of Welsh Rabbits or Frying Pan Ramekins. ”

“ Although uncooked cheese resembles meat in composition, cheese dishes prepared after ordinary recipes, with milk and shortening, are likely to contain more fat than meat dishes prepared in the usual ways. When, therefore, such cheese dishes are served with other staple foods the combination is likely to contain more fat than the usual meal. If little fat is ordinarily used, this may be an advantage. If a great deal of fat is ordinarily used, it may be desirable to lessen the amount in the cheese dishes. ”

“ Each succeeding course must lead to new ecstasy, else will the dinner turn out the worst of failures. In turbot au gratin, the ecstatic possibilities are by no means limited. In a chaste silver dish, make a pretty wall of potatoes, which have been beaten to flour, enlivened with pepper and salt, enriched with butter and cream—cream thick and fresh and altogether adorable—seasoned with Parmesan cheese, and left on the stove for ten minutes, neither more 54 nor less ”

“ Water to make 2 cups and
1 chicken bouillon cube.
Melt in saucepan, chafing dish or electric grill
3 tablespoons butter. Add
3 tablespoons flour mixed with
3⁄4 teaspoon salt and
1⁄8 teaspoon pepper.
Stir until smooth and add the
2 cups celery water and chicken stock.
Stir and boil 1 minute. Add
Cooked celery and bring to boiling point.
Mix
1 egg yolk and
2⁄3 cup cream.
Add to first mixture and cook 2 minutes over hot water, stirring constantly.
CELERY CHEESE TOAST Make above recipe for Celery Sauce, adding
1 cup grated cheese when celery is added.
Stir until cheese is melted. ”

“ Let the milk stand until the curd forms, then break up the curd and strain off the whey. Add the other ingredients to the curd; line patty tins with pastry, fill them with the mixture, and bake.
Brown Betty with Cheese.
Arrange in a deep earthenware baking dish, alternate layers of bread crumbs and thinly sliced apples. Season with cinnamon, also a little clove if desired and brown sugar. Scatter some finely shaved mild full-cream cheese over each layer of apple. ”

“ I have tested the sustaining power of such a meal by doing some very stiff mountain climbing and long fasting after it. It is rather too good—over nutritious—for a man only doing sedentary work.
A diluted and delicate modification of this may be made by taking slices of bread, or bread and butter, soaking them in a batter made of eggs and milk—without flour—then placing the slices of soaked bread in a pie-dish, covering each with a thick coating of grated cheese, and thus building up a stratified deposit to fill the dish. The surplus batter may be poured over the top ”

“ Chill. Serve with the dressing. Jellied this way, the recipe makes 6 servings.
Dessert salad
Sprinkle diced apples with lemon juice. Add chopped dates, raisins, or grapes. Mix with marshmallows or cream cheese cut in small cubes.
Apple juice salad dressing
For fruit salads....
1⁄4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
Juice 1 lemon
1 cup apple juice
1 egg, well beaten
1 3-ounce package cream cheese
Mix dry ingredients, add fruit juices, and blend. ”

“ Cheese should always be served on a folded napkin, for the reason that it is more or less oily and looks pleasanter on the napkin than on the plate.
The crisp green salad, with its accompaniment [Pg 85] of a red or golden cheese, is one of the most agreeable courses of the dinner, and no unsightly crumbs should be left on the cloth before it is served.
A carving-cloth should not be folded on the table. The corners may be turned deftly together and the cloth removed to a tray on which it may be carried to the pantry, to be folded later. ”

“ This is a little more difficult to accomplish when left-over materials are used in salads, but, even in this event, the addition of ingredients that will make the salad more nearly approach what must be supplied is usually possible. If the meal is to be a light one and the salad is to serve as the principal dish, it should be sufficiently heavy and contain enough food value to serve the purpose for which it is intended. ”

“ Let stand till morning, cool, but not on ice. Make rosettes of small lettuce leaves in the plates, lay a slice of pineapple on each, fill the hole in the center with pink pimento cheese. Make the cheese into a ball the size of a marble, and stick in it a tiny sprig of celery top. Put a little of the syrup from the bowl in each plate, then finish with very sharp French dressing. Make the pimento cheese by grinding fine half a can of pimento, and mixing it through two cakes of cream cheese, softening the cheese with French dressing, and seasoning it to taste. ”

“ The sweet and mellow kinds form a valuable addition to the dessert. A great part of the acid juice is converted into sugar as the fruit ripens, and even after it is gathered, by natural process, termed maturation; but, when apples decay, the sugar is changed into a bitter principle, and the mucilage becomes mouldy and offensive. Old cheese has a remarkable effect in meliorating the apple when eaten ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first two articles of the diet mentioned, namely, the bread and the cheese, could have been taken in such amounts as to constitute what is usually considered a balanced ration, i.e., in such amounts as to supply the right quantity of muscle-forming foods in comparison with the energy value. The bread and cheese taken with the fruit, however, make a ration which is well balanced not only in the older and more widely accepted sense, but also in the more modern sense that it makes an attractive and palatable combination of foods, as well as a balanced ration, and thus favors digestion. ”

“ Cereals should never be eaten with fruit, but may be eaten with salads and cheese. The mid-day meal of the unfired feeder should consist of nuts or cheese and a large plate of well-chopped salad with some kind of dressing over it; olive oil and lemon-juice or one of the nut-oils and lemon-juice. Orange-juice or raw carrot-juice may be used if preferred. When extra nourishment is desired a well-beaten raw egg may be mixed with the dressing. Fresh cream may also be used as dressing. ”

“ In the large number of experiments which were conducted, young men in good health were fed on a diet consisting of bread and fruit combined with American factory cheese which was made with different amounts of rennet and in different stages of ripening. The results showed that over 90 per cent of the nitrogenous material of the cheese was digested—that is, retained in the body—and nearly 90 per cent of the energy it supplied was available. In other words, cheese compares favorably with other foods in thoroughness of digestion—that is, in the percentage finally digested. ”

“ It is commonly said that cheese is difficult to digest, the idea being that the body expends more labor in assimilating it than is required for other comparable foods. Experiments recently carried on by the Office of Experiment Stations in which the respiration calorimeter was used to study the energy expenditure during the period of active digestion, do not indicate that cheese differs materially in ease of digestion from a comparable amount of meat. ”

“ There is always likely to be at least one member of the family who does not relish it in quantity. Another cause is the fact that it is commonly believed to be indigestible, and still another is the fact that housekeepers, through lack of experience, are much less skillful in the arrangement of bills of fare in which cheese is the central food than they are in arranging bills of fare in which meat is thus used. ”

“ Turn it out into a dish, and the result gives a beautiful nutritious mixture which thickens like a custard in cooling. This custard may be eaten with impunity even by those persons who would be ill after [446] eating a piece of cheese the size of a nut, and is peculiarly adapted as food for all persons who work hard with either brain or muscle. Fancy dishes may be made in the following manner, e.g., take the mixture of cheese and bicarbonate and water (or milk) given above, and add to it 2 eggs, white and yolk beaten up together, for every 1⁄4 lb. of cheese in the mixture. ”

“ CHEESE DISHES WHICH MAY BE USED IN THE SAME WAY AS MEAT.
Meat is wholesome and relished by most persons, yet it is not essential to a well-balanced meal and there are many housekeepers who for one reason or another are interested in lessening the amount of meat which they provide or to substitute some other foods for it. The problem with the average family is undoubtedly more often the occasional substitution of other palatable dishes for the sake of variety, for reasons of economy, or for some other reason than the general replacement of meat dishes by other things. ”

“ Then, too, the buying and care of cheese are much simpler matters than the buying and care of meat. As it does not require the low temperature that meat requires and does not spoil so readily, it can be bought in considerable quantity and used as desired without danger of spoiling and loss. In addition, the use of cheese as food does not require so much skill in preparation as meat does, nor is there loss of flavor and nutriment in its preparation, as is often the case with meat. ”

“ In order that the diet may remain well balanced, cheese, if used in quantity, should replace foods of similar composition rather than supplement them. The builder who has a choice of materials must have a knowledge of their relative properties if he wishes to use stone instead of brick, or wood in place of iron. It is the same with the housekeeper who wishes to use her available food supply intelligently and whose choice of foods is influenced by their relative cost at a given time or season. ”

“ Though cheese is so generally used in some way in most families, yet the making of menus with cheese as a central dish is less well understood than more usual food combinations, since there is less experience to serve as a guide. More thought is therefore usually required to arrange such cheese meals in order that they may be palatable and at the same time reasonable in nutritive value. ”

“ One can hardly realize the added pleasure they give to the life of hundreds of thousands of poor people whose food must be of the coarsest character. A bit of well-flavored cheese adds relish to the humblest meal and gives the highest delight. We must recognize, then, that the chief value of the cheese lies exactly in these flavors which the chemist does not include in his analysis of cheese and which the physiologist refuses to call food or to regard as having any nutritive value whatever. Incidentally, it is true that the cheese also furnishes a considerable amount of food material. ”

“ Some varieties of cheese are used chiefly for the first purpose, others chiefly for the second. Those which are used chiefly for their flavor, many of which are high priced, contribute little to the [Pg 12] food value of the diet, because of the small quantity used at a time. They have an important part to play, however, in making the diet attractive and palatable. The intelligent housekeeper thinks of them not as necessities, but as lying within what has been called “the region of choice.” ”