“——_has the best Welsh rabbit backed off the stove._”
Take one country home in New Jersey. One dependable apple-jack
bootlegger. One cook who threatens to leave unless she can begin her
nightly visits to her daughter in the village as early as seven-thirty
o’clock.
Take three or four acquaintances who drop in for apple-jack cocktails
just as your cook is about to put the steak on to broil. Then have
your guests linger near the cocktail shaker until you, your wife and
especially your delayed cook are approaching hysteria.
“Why not stay,” you now announce to your guests in desperation, “and
we’ll all make a rum-tum-tiddy?”
You now tell your grateful cook not to bother preparing a meal. You
next take one flivver and hurriedly drive her to her daughter’s in
the village. Then you buy in the village one and one-half pounds of
American cheese, one can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and a dozen bottles
of beer—real beer, if you can get it, Volstead beer if you can’t.
_NOW_:—
Pry your guests away from the cocktail shaker and shoo them into the
kitchen. Everybody from this on who is not occupied in mincing the
green pepper in a chopping bowl is busy cutting the American cheese
into cubes about an inch square. Everybody else beats two fresh
eggs—whites and yolks together.
Drop a lump of butter into a saucepan to prevent “sticking.” Begin to
melt the pound and one half of diced cheese in the saucepan, stirring
the lumps to prevent burning. When the cheese is fairly well melted,
pour into it the can of tomato soup and the two beaten eggs. Stir into
the mixture about one-third of a bottle of beer. Pour in also the
finely chopped green pepper and continue stirring until smooth.
Have hot dinner plates ready, each plate containing a large slice of
hot, unbuttered toast. Place at least one bottle of beer—two if it’s
real—beside each plate.
Holler “Ready, people!” and pour on each piece of toast enough of the
contents of the saucepan to form a pinkish overflow of rum-tum-tiddy on
the plate.
That’s all—except to shake ’em up a semi-final cocktail and then start
right back to the village in the flivver for another pound and one half
of cheese, another pepper and more beer to make another immediately
when the first rum-tum-tiddy is gone. One calls for two, often three.
Serve preferably in the kitchen. Serve in any room far from the kitchen
if you want leg work exercise. Eat until gorged.