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Ramakin or Cheese Pudding
Grate half a pound of good old Cheshire cheese, and mix a large table-spoonful of flour with it. Stir in gradually a little milk to moisten the cheese, and afterwards add three or four well-beaten eggs, and as much milk as will make the batter of the consistency of cream. Half fill a buttered dish with the mixture, place little pieces of butter here and there upon the surface, and bake the pudding in a brisk oven. When it is well risen and of a golden colour it is done enough. Serve as quickly as possible after it is taken out of the oven, or it will spoil. Time to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons. (See also CHEESE PUDDING, ETC.).
A soufflé-adjacent baked cheese batter that lives or dies on being served the moment it leaves the oven. Everything else is straightforward.
- Serve it immediatelyThis is the hinge. The rise comes largely from steam and beaten egg, with only a tablespoonful of flour for structure, so it will start to sink soon after leaving the oven. Have the table sitting down and waiting, not the pudding.
- "Brisk oven"Read that as roughly 400-425F. The high heat is what drives the puff in the fifteen to twenty minutes the recipe allows; a slower oven is likely to give a denser, wetter result.
- Half fill the dishNot an aesthetic instruction. The mixture rises substantially, and a dish filled higher risks spilling over. A 1.5-quart baking dish suits this quantity.
- Cheshire cheeseOld Cheshire is a firm, crumbly, fairly salty cow's-milk cheese. If you cannot find it, a sharp farmhouse Cheddar or a dry Lancashire behaves similarly; avoid anything young and rubbery, which will string rather than melt into the batter.
- Half a pound, gratedAbout 8 oz, or roughly 2 cups loosely packed once grated. Grate it fine so it disperses before the eggs go in.
- "As much milk as will make the batter of the consistency of cream"Expect somewhere around 3/4 to 1 cup in total, added in stages. Pourable but not thin: single cream, not milk. Cheese moisture varies, so judge by eye rather than by a fixed figure.
- Order of mixingFlour into the cheese first, then a little milk, then the eggs. Coating the cheese in flour before the liquid goes in should help bind the mixture and limit the fat separating out during baking.
- Salt and seasoningNone is specified; old Cheshire is salty in itself. Taste the batter before it goes in the dish; a pinch of cayenne or dry mustard is a common addition to Victorian cheese dishes.
- Yield and the cost noteThe recipe gives five or six as a savoury course or light supper dish; three as a main with bread and salad. The "1s. 4d." is shillings and pence, one of the costings the book supplies for each dish.
"Ramakin" is the English spelling of the French ramequin, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries commonly meant a cheese preparation rather than the small dish it is baked in; the vessel appears to have taken its name from the food rather than the reverse. The book places this among the cheese entries, cross-referring to CHEESE PUDDING. Dishes of this kind were associated with the English savoury course, served hot towards the end of dinner. Cheshire was one of the great keeping cheeses of the English dairy counties; "good old" simply means well matured, which gave the sharpness a bland egg batter needs.