Comparative Cheese & Also Custard Puddings (1845-1855)

While I'm going through my old pictures: last week's cheese experiments at Fort Nisqually. All three receipts are variations on "melted cheese adjacent to bread" from The Carolina Housewife (1855).

Boiled Cheese.

 We used Quin's homemade sourdough and a mild cheddar cheese for all three receipts, in order to compare them. The boiled cheese involved melting the cheese on the stovetop with milk, butter, and egg. It was served with sippets of toasted bread (made in bulk on the skillet on the stovetop, since toasting it on the forks one at a time would have been prohibitive). The stewed cheese called for cream, butter, cheese, and a salamander to cook it from above. Both ended up tasting like delicious melted cheese, and tended to solidify quickly once taken off the heat. The stewed cheese was a little less intensely cheddar-flavored, but they were very similar in general.

To Stew Cheese.

The toasted cheese again called for grated cheese mixed with cream and butter, but also had salt, pepper, mustard, and breadcrumbs, which worked into a paste with the consistency of play-dough. This was spread over slices of bread and baked in the oven until the cheese started to brown. The flavor was quite good (after eating so much cheese, the slight kick of the mustard made a nice variation), though the texture of the cheese paste was a little too similar to the bread in my opinion. It was however, much easier and neater to eat than the first two receipts. All three receipts went together quickly, and would be easy to make around other receipts (say, for the cook's lunch while demonstrating other dishes).

To Toast Cheese.

For dessert, we made two different versions of a custard pudding. Again, for good comparison, both were flavored with almond [there was a mishap with the lemon flavoring] and served with homemade preserves. One was a common custard pudding from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery (1845), the other from Cookery Rational, Practical, and Economical (1855). 

Common custard pudding. (Boiled)

The first was boiled, and the second baked, but the only other difference was the exact proportion of eggs, milk, and flavoring. The baked pudding did have an option to substitute flour for some of the eggs, but we decided not to do this. Both receipts produced a nice molded dessert with the texture of a flan and a notable, but not overwhelming, almond flavor. There was a small mishap with the boiled pudding turning sideways enough to have water leak into the mold, but the pudding still held together when turned out. I did end up draining excess water off the plate after it had set a few minutes. I noticed little difference between the two, but Quin preferred the baked pudding (the water leak apparently making the boiled one too moist).

Custard pudding. (Baked.)

All in all, it was a tasty day. Except for the bread being baked in advance in a modern home kitchen, everything was prepared in the Fort's historic kitchen, using the wood-burning stove. All of our ingredients were as close to period as possible, and most can be documented to the place as well.