rs, the making of a real aboriginal
Welsh Rabbit would be a lost art--lost in sporting male attempts to
improve upon the original.

The girls are still polite about the whole thing and protectively
pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their
culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high
society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's
dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a
lot to be said for this more genteel and appetizing rendering of the
word, for the Welsh masterpiece is, after all, a very rare bit of
cheesemongery, male or female.

Yet in dealing with "Rarebits" the distaff side seldom sets down more
than the basic Adam and Eve in a whole Paradise of Rabbits: No. 1,
the wild male type made with beer, and No. 2, the mild female made
with milk. Yet now that the chafing dish has come back to stay,
there's a flurry in the Rabbit warren and the new cooking
encyclopedias give up to a dozen variants. Actually there are easily
half a gross of valid ones in current esteem.

The two basic recipes are differentiated by the liquid ingredient, but
both the beer and the milk are used only one way--warm, or anyway at
room temperature. And again for the two, there is but one traditional
cheese--Cheddar, ripe, old or merely aged from six months onward. This
is also called American, store, sharp, Rabbit, yellow, beer, Wisconsin
Longhorn, mouse, and even rat.

The seasoned, sapid Cheddar-type, so indispensable, includes dozens of
varieties under different names, regional or commercial. These are
easily identified as sisters-under-the-rinds by all five senses:

sight: Golden yellow and mellow to the eye. It's one of those
round cheeses that also tastes round in the mouth.

hearing: By thumping, a cheese-fancier, like a melon-picker,
can tell if a Cheddar is rich, ripe and ready for the Rabbit.
When you hear your dealer say, "It's six months old or more,"
enough said.

smell: A scent as fresh as that of the daisies and herbs the
mother milk cow munched "will hang round it still." Also a slight
beery savor.

touch: Crumbly--a caress to the fingers.

taste: The quintessence of this fivefold test. Just cuddle a
crumb with your tongue and if it tickles the taste buds it's
prime. When it melts in your mouth, that's proof it will melt in
the pan.

Beyond all this (and in spite