What the heck is “an English Monkey on Bean and Nut Loaf,” you ask. The answer is more convoluted, and debatable, than you may realize. But in short, the “English Monkey” part of this dish apparently dates back to someone in Wales, some time in the 18^th or 19^th century, who had thin skin and a witty way with words, and who had come to the conclusion that the name of a dish loved by the English, called Welsh Rabbit, was a slur against the Welsh. Whether it is, in fact, an insult is questionable. But by at least some accounts, Welsh Rabbit, a cheese spread that contains no rabbit or any trace of any kind of meat, was indeed named to poke fun at the inhabitants of Wales, who were presumed to be either too poor to afford meat or too drunk to shoot straight, and thus were resigned to eating cheese while pretending that it was meat.

An English Monkey appears to slither onto a slice of Bean and Nut Loaf

Shooting a barb back at the English – this theory about the origin of the recipe goes – the Welsh inventor of a variation of Welsh Rabbit named his or her dish An English Monkey.

Which begs the question, what is Welsh Rabbit? It is, to begin with, definitely not supposed to be called “Welsh Rarebit.” On that point, the leading authorities on culinary history and English usage seem to agree. No less an eminence than H. W. Fowler, writing in the 1926 edition of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, bluntly asserted, “Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.” In his Devil’s Dictionary, published in 1911, Ambrose Bierce, the satirist and chronicler of California in the decades after the Gold Rush, also scoffed at the “humorless” souls who insisted on calling Welsh Rabbit “Rarebit.”

Efforts to set the record straight notwithstanding, it is usually called “rarebit” anyway by most contemporary cookbook authors, including my favorite, Mark Bittman, of the New York Times. (His recipe for “Welsh Rarebit,” which he called “one of the best late-night snacks I know,” can be found here.) Whatever it is named, rabbit or rarebit, it is a thick, melted cheese sauce made with cheddar or another English cheese, ale or dark beer, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and sometimes cayenne or paprika, thickened with flour and butter, and sometimes thinned with cream. It is, in short, a beery English take on the fondues that the Swiss make with their own Swiss cheese and wine.

An English Monkey in a Bowl

Which brings us around, at last, to the answer: An English Monkey is a variation on Welsh Rabbit, made without ale or beer. The sauce in which the cheese is melted is instead made with bread crumbs, milk and eggs. There are a number of other variations, each with an amusing name of its own: an Irish Rabbit, Scotch Rabbit, Blushing Bunny (colored with tomato soup), Scotch Woodcock, and more. But I digress.

Recipes for An English Monkey and Welsh Rabbit appeared side by side in some old American cookbooks, such as the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896, as if to show that here in the colonies, we had gotten over the petty tribal rivalries from the Old Country that may have given birth to An English Monkey in the first place. But there was no place for rarebit in the first California cookbook that included a recipe for the venerable cheese sauce from the British Isles. That book, Practical Vegetarian Cookery, was published by the Theosophical Society in San Francisco in 1896, and the Theosophists believed that you should strike alcohol, as well as meat, from your diet to ensure that your soul will ascend as quickly as possible in the afterlife.

An English Monkey and Welsh Rarebit are both traditionally served on crackers or toast. But I found, in another chapter in Vintage California Cuisine, what in my opinion is an even better vehicle for An English Monkey than bread: Bean and Nut Loaf. That recipe comes from another early California vegetarian cookbook, Vegetarian Cook Book: Substitutes for Flesh Foods, published in 1910. With such a large quotient of bread crumbs in the cheese sauce, it would be redundant, don’t you think, to serve it on bread. The Bean and Nut Loaf proved to be firm enough that it could be easily sliced, like bread (though too crumbly to pick up).

Slices of Bean and Nut Loaf

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Here, then, are the recipes:

An English Monkey

Soak one cupful of bread crumbs in one cupful of milk about 10 or 15 minutes. Melt one tablespoon of butter, add one cupful of cheese broken into small pieces; Stir until melted, add the crumbs and one beaten egg, one half teaspoon of salt, a few grains of bicarbonate of soda as large as a pea. Cook for five minutes. Serve on wafers.

Source: Practical Vegetarian Cookery (1897)

Bean and Nut Loaf

white beans, 1 cup
onion, ¼ cup
sage
bread crumbs, toasted, or granola
walnuts, chopped, 1 cup
egg, 1
salt

Thoroughly wash the beans and soak overnight. Boil thoroughly and when done rub through a colander. Add the chopped walnuts, eggs, onion braised in olive oil, sage and salt to taste. Thicken with granola or toasted bread crumbs. Put into an oiled pan and bake. Serve with gravy.

Source: Vegetarian Cook Book:
Substitutes for Flesh Foods (1910)

Was vegetarianism a harder sell in Northern California than in Southern California a century ago? The San Francisco Chronicle certainly thought so, judging from an article in that paper in 1897 about a British immigrant named M.S. Manning, who had come to California to “spread propaganda for the conversion of mankind to the use of an exclusive diet of raw fruits and nuts.” He had quickly discerned that the denizens of San Francisco were much too sensible for such nonsense, the paper was pleased to report, but other parts of the state were more receptive to his kooky teachings.  “The field chosen by Mr. Manning for the scene of his personal labors is Southern California, where supplies of ‘natural food’ are always abundant and disciples are easy to gather from the perennial influx of cadaverous strangers, whose main occupation is the contemplation of the workings of their interior works,” the Chronicle joshed.

‘Roast Duck’ With Walnut Gravy

Two of the first vegetarian cookbooks published in California, both of which are represented in Vintage California Cuisine, lend further credence to the notion that at least some Southern Californians around the turn of the 20^th century were more open to the possibility of going without meat than their fellow Californians to the north. Practical Vegetarian Cookery, published in 1897 by the Theosophical Society, was written for true believers who didn’t need any encouragement to wean themselves from an animal diet. Members of the society, which at the time had its international headquarters at Point Loma, near San Diego, were steeped in a philosophy which held that eating meat would hamper their ascent in the afterlife. On the other hand, Substitutes for Flesh Foods, published in Oakland in 1910, targeted folks who, as the title of the book and many of its recipes implied, were willing to consider giving up meat but wished they didn’t have to.

Consider, for instance, one of the recipes from Substitutes for Flesh Foods that I tested during my recent visit with my mostly vegetarian daughter, Sara, and her boyfriend Michael in Los Angeles. It is a lentil casserole curiously called “roast duck.” The recipe suggests serving it with gravy, so we whipped up some walnut gravy, using a recipe from the same book. Here are the recipes.

Roast Duck (Vegetarian Style)

lentil pulp, 1¾ cups
minced onion, ¼ cup
chopped parsley, 1/3 cup
stale bread crumbs, ground fine, 1 cup
eggs (one hard-boiled), 3
butter, 1 teaspoonful
chopped walnuts, ½ cup

Take lentil pulp, one hard-boiled egg chopped fine, one beaten egg, minced onion, and chopped parsley browned in a little oil, one teaspoonful of butter, and salt to taste. Mix well and put one-half of this mixture in an oiled baking pan, then a layer of the following mixture: Stale bread crumbs soaked in hot water, chopped walnuts, a little grated onion, one egg, and salt and sage to taste. Finish with a layer of the lentil mixture. Bake, and serve with gravy.
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Walnut Gravy

walnuts, ground, 1 cup
milk, 1 cup
flour, 1 tablespoon
flour, browned, 2 tablespoons
water, 2 cups
salt to taste

Put the water and milk in a saucepan, and when boiling add the walnuts.  Thicken with the flour, and salt to taste.

Source: Substitutes for Flesh Foods (1910)

On paper, the lentil concoction did not look promising. My instincts told me that a layer of bread crumbs in a lentil casserole might be a good idea, but that it should go on top, where it could form a nice, crunchy crust, not in the middle where it would, I assumed, turn into a gummy mess. With that unpleasant thought in mind, I was prepared, in advance, to pronounce this recipe a disaster.

Well, what do you know! The lentil layers on the bottom and top formed the sort of pleasing crust I wanted in a casserole. And the bread and egg mixture, thanks in large part to the inclusion of walnuts in that layer, had the texture of a nutty bread pudding that worked with the overall dish. As a matter of fact, it was reminiscent – at least remotely – of a slice of roasted fowl with well-browned skin.

The verdict of my taste-testers: “Oh my god,” exclaimed Sara. “It tastes like duck … I think.” She admitted that she couldn’t remember ever have had real duck, but Michael, who has “had lots of duck in my day” declared with greater certainty, “It does taste like duck!” Had the recipe’s title not planted that notion in our minds, would we have detected a resemblance? Probably not. But the title clearly served its purpose. And whatever it was called, we all agreed that it was quite good, and very hearty.

It would be better, I believe, if I had planned ahead a day or two and made my own bread crumbs, preferably with some good, whole-grain bread. Instead, I used store-bought panko bread crumbs. And instead of mashing the lentils with Sara’s potato masher, next time I will try running them through a food mill. In any event, the result this time was pleasing enough that, much to my surprise, I will certainly consider trying this again.