Welcome to 18th century cooking I'm your host Jon Townsend. What do you do if you
have a loaf of stale bread and a block of old cheese? Well we're gonna find out today,
thanks for joining us today as we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century.
So the recipe for today is out of Ann Cooks 1760 cookbook "Professed Cookery" super simple recipe
it's called "To Make a Cheshire Cheese Soup" "put a crumb of a penny loaf into three pints of water,
boil it, grate half a pound of old Cheshire and put it into the bread and boil it". Super simple
recipe right it's only got water it's got bread it's got cheese but it's one of these recipes
that could be not necessarily you know her reference here but it could be one of those
recipes that it's like okay how do I get rid of these things is that very efficient recipe the
crumb of a penny loaf that can be stale bread bread this has gone bad you pare it off the bad
parts keep the good parts and you're using just crumb right and then the cheese. She calls for
an old Cheshire Cheese an old Cheshire cheese Cheshire Cheese was one of those long-lived
cheesed in the time period it's one of those kind of hard cheeses they would leave around
and they would actually age it and cheese here is a it's a food preservation technique what happens
when you have a lot of milk you make cheese so cheese is a great item when you want something
milk based and maybe cows aren't giving milk at that time or you've had milk that was prolific
at one part of the time of the year and you need food later on and so that this cheese is
the perfect preservation method both of these things go together make a very efficient food
source. So we're gonna start up with three pints of boiling water that isn't a ton of water it'll
come up to boil pretty quickly and you can put your bread crumbs in there that crumb of a penny
loaf these pieces are pretty big you might want to chop those up very very fine and break down
a little bit faster you can use panko or other bread crumbs I like using actual bread though
because it just seems better to me. The crumb of a penny loaf in the recipe we're not sure that
the penny loaf kind of changes in size but it's not a big loaf of bread six maybe eight ounces
something like that would be a good place to start with the amount of bread after you bread
is boiled a little while it's broken down a bit and kind of smoothed out now it's time to bring
in that cheese you want eight ounces of cheese the recipe calls for old Cheshire nut that's
almost impossible to come up with here in North America so you can use some other cheese's you
could use a Parmesan cheese you could use I mean basically any cheese you got around the house you
don't want to use a stringy cheese like mozzarella so here I'm using a cheddar that's gonna turn out
great again I chopped up this cheese into bits you can grate it in fact she calls for grating
the cheese so that it mixes in and breaks down and gets smooth very quickly as it goes into this
boiling water once it's back up the boiling it's basically done you don't really need to keep going
unless you want it to smooth out. Don't let those boil too long if you do make sure to keep stirring
it you don't want it to stick to the bottom and kind of you know build up a thick layer now it's
basically ready to come off the fire and pour into those bowls let it cool down a little bit.
We added a little bit of spring greens we've got some wild garlic growing right outside
so I thought this would be perfect just to sprinkle up on top of this as a garnish and
traditionally in soup dishes in this time period a little toast sippets sometimes
you'll put a piece of toast in the bottom and pour your soup on top or you'll stick
a little sippets in like this so we've got some sippets let's find out just how this
tasted now it's smoothed right out let's find out mmm wonderful texture wonderful.
Got a great cheesy flavor this particular cheese has just enough salt in with it so it tastes
great that way it might add a little pepper just just for the fun of it because I enjoy
pepper. Let's find out what it's like what its like with one of these little sippets.
Hmm so so very good and this smell is great little fill your kitchen with a wonderful smell
a great way to use stale bread or you know not stale bread for that matter and cheese
a very filling meal and just tremendously easy to do very simple just ingredients you've got
right around the house if you're interested in cheese making from the time period make
sure to check out this cheese making video that we shot at Genesee Country Village.