Wine-Cheese Spread

Actually, it's probably wise to avoid open flames with this recipe...

So picture this:  it's the weekend and you're hosting a fancy-pants wine and cheese party for all of your sophisticated and worldly friends.  In one evening, you're going to discuss How Things Are Done In France, the state of print media, and whether or not Coltrane's earlier music was more challenging than his later stuff.  This is a full agenda, my friends!  On top of all this, you've got to come up with an impressive appetizer to wow those classy, urbanite friends of yours.  And when you think of Classy Appetizers™ to make for your fancy-pants wine and cheese parties, what are the first ingredients that come to mind?  That's right: American cheese and cooking sherry!

How does it taste, you ask?  Well, imagine you're eating a big glob of processed cheese paste with chunks of olive and pimento in it.  Now imagine that someone has poured a whole bunch of booze into this cheese-paste.  Yeah, that's pretty much how it tastes!  The sherry is powerful, and the ol' neon orange cheddar is just heavy.  There are so many more tempting choices when it comes to cheese, like a nice creamy Camembert, or a 14 week aged Stilton...  I mean, why limit yourself?

This recipe is pretty vague about how much of each ingredient to use.  I started out with about a loose cup of shredded sharp cheddar, and put in what I thought would be the right amount of sherry.  As I mixed it together, I thought, Uh-oh... that's too much sherry. I'm gonna need more cheese.   So I added more cheese.  Then more sherry.  And so on.  The moral of this story is to add the sherry in tiny, tiny increments. Otherwise, you will be left with a big bowl full of gooey cheese paste and a room full of sophisticated, worldly friends who are very disappointed in you.

Wine-Cheese Spread

Combine aged American or Cheddar cheese with enough sherry to make a smooth spread.  Add half as much chopped stuffed olives.  Mix well.

This recipe is from the appetizer section of the Mary Margaret McBride Encyclopedia of Cooking, published  by Homemakers Research Institute in 1959.