Rum-Tum-Tiddy (1922)
Reader ratingsRum-tum-tiddy, Frank Ward O’Malley’s kitchen supper for unexpected guests from The Stag Cook Book of 1922: American cheese melted with tomato soup, eggs, green pepper and a splash of beer, poured hot over toast.
- Recipe makes
- 6 servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Chop the pepper and cube the cheese before you start; once the cheese is melting the sauce needs stirring until it goes onto the toast.
Rum-tum-tiddy, cheese and tomato sauce on toast.
The story behind the recipe
Rum-tum-tiddy is cheese melted with tomato soup, eggs, green pepper and beer, poured over hot toast. This version comes from The Stag Cook Book, a collection of recipes by well-known men published in New York in 1922, where the writer Frank Ward O’Malley sets it in the middle of a dry-years evening.
A party that wouldn’t leave
His recipe opens like a story, with a country house in New Jersey and a dependable applejack bootlegger. Guests drop in for applejack cocktails just as the cook wants to leave, so the host drives her to the village, buys cheese, a can of tomato soup and a dozen bottles of beer, and puts everyone to work. Some chop the pepper, some cube the cheese, someone beats the eggs. The sauce is poured over unbuttered toast “to form a pinkish overflow,” and eaten in the kitchen where it was made. He wanted real beer if he could get it and “Volstead beer” if he couldn’t, most likely the near beer that stayed under Prohibition’s 0.5 percent.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Alcohol-free beer is the nearest thing now to near beer, and either it or ordinary beer works, since only a splash goes into the pan. American cheese in 1922 could mean plain mild cheddar or the new processed kind; mild cheddar gives a sharper sauce, while block American cheese melts smoother. Keep the heat low so the cheese doesn’t turn oily and the eggs thicken the sauce without curdling.
O’Malley’s evening, and the dry-years books around it, are in What Did Americans Cook When the Bars Closed in 1920?, and the same book printed President Harding’s Waffles (1922).
Take one country home in New Jersey. One dependable apple-jack bootlegger. ...
Recipe makes: 6 servings
Ingredients
For 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 6 servings.
- Unsalted butter1 tbsp
- Mild cheddar or block American cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes1.5 lb
- Canned condensed tomato soup10.75 oz
- Large eggs2
- Beer or alcohol-free beer1/2 cup
- Green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped1
- Large slices bread6
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1½ lb mild cheddar or block American cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 10¾ oz canned condensed tomato soup
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup beer or alcohol-free beer
- 1 green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
- 6 large slices bread
Equipment
- Heavy saucepan
Wooden spoon- Small bowl and fork
- Toaster or broiler
- Warmed dinner plates
Instructions
Melt the butter in the heavy saucepan over low heat. Add the cheese and stir until it is almost all melted, keeping the heat low.
Stir in the tomato soup straight from the can, undiluted. Beat the eggs in the small bowl, then stir them in a little at a time.
Stir in the beer and the green pepper. Keep stirring over low heat for 5 to 8 minutes, until the sauce is smooth, thick enough to coat the spoon and steaming hot, about 160°F (71°C).
Toast the bread while the sauce finishes. Set a slice of hot toast on each warmed plate.
Pour the sauce over the toast so that it spills onto the plate, and serve at once.
Nutrition
660calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 6 servings
- Servings
- 6
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, with one slice of toast each.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
One can of soup and two eggs to each 1½ lb of cheese, as O’Malley made it.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
O’Malley says one batch “calls for two, often three,” so for a crowd make a second panful after the first, as he did; a smaller pan of sauce is easier to keep smooth. If the sauce turns grainy, take it off the heat and stir in a spoonful more beer. Contains milk, egg and wheat; check the soup and beer labels for allergens.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Frank Ward O’Malley, Rum-Tum-Tiddy, in C. Mac Sheridan, ed., The Stag Cook Book (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922)
Recipe details
- Course
- Main course
- Region
- American
- Era
- Interwar
- Source decade
- 1920s
- Event
- Prohibition, 1920
- Main ingredient
- Milk & cream
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Dinner party