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Ramakins, Fried
Slice thinly four ounces of rich cheese, and put it into a perfectly clean saucepan with two ounces of fresh butter. Shake over a gentle fire till the mixture is melted, let it cool a minute or two, and stir in briskly the whites of three eggs beaten to a firm froth. Put some small squares of bread into the frying-pan with a little hot butter, spread the mixture upon the bread, and fry the ramakins for five minutes. Drain them from the fat, hold a salamander or red-hot iron over them till they are lightly browned, and serve very hot.
A Victorian savoury: melted cheese lightened with beaten egg white, spread on bread and fried. The hinge is temperature — the cheese mixture must be cool enough not to slacken the whites, and the pan hot enough to set the bread without cooking the topping to leather.
- "Rich cheese"Means a well-flavoured full-fat cheese; a hard English cheese such as Cheddar, Cheshire or Gloucester would suit, though the recipe does not specify. Four ounces is about 115 g, grated rather than sliced if you want it to melt evenly.
- Melt gently, then waitCheese heated hard will split and go stringy. Shake over the lowest heat until just fluid, then let it stand until it is barely warm to a fingertip; poured hot onto whipped whites it will deflate them instantly.
- Folding, not stirring"Stir in briskly" reflects period practice, but the mixture holds its lift better if you slacken the cheese with a spoonful of the whites first, then fold in the rest with a spatula.
- The salamanderA flat iron plate on a long handle, heated in the fire and held above food to brown the surface — the direct ancestor of the grill. Use an overhead broiler at its highest setting for a minute, or a kitchen blowtorch.
- Five minutes is for the breadThat timing browns the bread base in shallow butter; the topping is finished by the salamander, not the pan. Watch the underside rather than the clock — thin crustless bread in hot butter can colour in two or three minutes.
- Butter in the panButter alone at frying heat browns fast. Clarified butter, or butter with a little neutral oil, gives you more margin before it burns.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity of mixture will cover something in the order of eight to twelve small squares of bread, enough for a savoury course for a few people or a plateful of canapés.
- Serve immediatelyThe aerated cheese collapses as it cools and the bread softens underneath. These do not hold, and they do not reheat.
Ramakins (also ramequins, ramakins, ramequin) began as the dish rather than the vessel: an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cheese preparation, often baked in small moulds, which is how the moulds themselves came to be called ramekins. The word reached English from French ramequin, itself generally traced to a Dutch or Low German form, though the ultimate origin and sense are uncertain. It belongs among the savouries -- the small, salty, often cheese-based course served after the sweet at a formal Victorian dinner, traditionally explained as settling the palate before the wine. Frying them on bread rather than baking them in china is the older, more tavern-like treatment, closer to Welsh rarebit than to a souffle, and the salamander finish is a reminder that browning from above meant a piece of iron heated in the fire.