or two of sound wine, or any equivalent--and who proposes to
swallow at least three tumblers of something hot ere he resigns
himself to the embrace of Somnus. With these provisos, I
recommend toasted cheese for supper.

The popularity of this has come down to us in the succinct
summing-up, "Toasted cheese hath no master."

The Welsh original became simple after Dr. Maginn's supper sandwich
was served, a century and a half ago; for it was served as a savory to
sum up and help digest a dinner, in this form:


After-Dinner Rabbit

Remove all crusts from bread slices, toast on both sides and soak
to saturation in hot beer. Melt thin slices of sharp old cheese
in butter in an iron skillet, with an added spot of beer and dry
English mustard. Stir steadily with a wooden spoon and, when
velvety, serve a-sizzle on piping hot beer-soaked toast.

While toasted cheese undoubtedly was the Number One dairy dish of
Anglo-Saxons, stewed cheese came along to rival it in Elizabethan
London. This sophisticated, big-city dish, also called a Buck Rabbit,
was the making of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, where Dr.
Johnson later presided. And it must have been the pick of the town
back in the days when barrooms still had sawdust on the floor, for the
learned Doctor endorsed old Omar Khayyam's love of the pub with:
"There is nothing which has been contrived by man by which so much
happiness is produced as by a good tavern." Yet he was no gourmet, as