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Cheese Ramequins
Mix two ounces of flour very smoothly with a cupful of water, and put it, with a little salt and pepper, and a piece of butter about the size of an egg, into a saucepan. Let it boil for three or four minutes, then stir in four ounces of fine Cheshire cheese crumbled; let it boil another minute, and add three eggs well beaten; put them in gradually, stirring all the time. Have ready a well-oiled baking-tin, and drop this mixture upon it, in lumps about the size of a small apple. Press them slightly in the centre, brush them over with egg, and put a tea-spoonful of Gruyere cheese in small pieces in the middle. Bake in a hot oven, and serve as hot as possible. If preferred, Parmesan cheese may be used instead of Cheshire. Time to bake, about twelve minutes. Sufficient for four or five ramequins. Probable cost, 1s.
This is choux paste made savoury — the same flour-water-butter panade as a cream puff, loaded with cheese. Two details in the Victorian wording will trip up a modern cook: the water quantity and the baking time.
- The hinge: dry the paste, then cool itThe recipe mixes the flour smoothly with cold water and then boils it, rather than beating flour into boiling liquid; either way, keep it over the heat until it is smooth and thick enough to leave the sides of the pan. Take it off the heat and let it cool for several minutes before the eggs go in, or they may scramble and the paste will not rise.
- "A cupful of water"Genuinely ambiguous. A Victorian teacupful is usually reckoned at about a quarter of a pint (5 fl oz), a breakfast cup nearer 8 fl oz. For 2 oz of flour and 2 oz of butter, the smaller reading gives a workable choux; a full 8 oz of water would need considerably more flour. Judge by texture — the paste should be stiff enough to hold a shape when dropped.
- Butter "the size of an egg"Roughly 2 oz, about 4 tablespoons.
- Cheshire cheeseA firm, crumbly, slightly salty English cheese, still sold in good cheese shops. A dry, crumbly Lancashire or a sharp white Cheddar behaves similarly in the paste. The recipe's own alternative, Parmesan, gives a much saltier result — reduce the added salt if you use it.
- "A hot oven"425–450°F (220–230°C). Choux needs the initial blast to convert its water to steam and inflate the shell.
- Twelve minutes is too shortThat would suit a walnut-sized puff. Lumps "about the size of a small apple" need 20–25 minutes — bake until deeply browned and firm to the tap. A pale, underbaked choux collapses within a minute of leaving the oven.
- The well-oiled tinUse baking parchment instead. Heavily greased tins encourage the bases to spread and slide before the shell sets.
- Yield and servingFour or five large puffs. Whether the original means four or five items or four or five servings is not clear from the wording. They are at their best straight from the oven; the recipe says to serve them 'as hot as possible.'
These are gougères under an English name: ramequin in nineteenth-century British cookery books usually meant a small hot cheese preparation, not the little china dish, which took the name later from being the vessel such things were baked in. Cassell's gives the recipe at a moment when the English dinner still closed with a hot cheese course before the dessert, and when French terminology carried prestige on a menu card. The choice of Cheshire is telling — it was one of the great English market cheeses of the period, cheaper and more widely available than Parmesan, which the book offers as the more expensive substitution. The Gruyère pressed into the centre is the flourish: a pocket of cheese that melts as the shell sets. The stated cost of one shilling reflects a dish built chiefly from flour, butter and eggs, with cheese as the only real outlay.