Home › The Principles of Cookery › Ramakins, with Ale or Wine
Ramakins, with Ale or Wine
Soak the crumb of a French roll in a cupful of boiling cream for a few minutes. Put it in a mortar with four ounces of grated Cheshire cheese, and four ounces of good butter. Pound the mixture well, and beat it thoroughly with the whisked yolks of four eggs, and a wine-glassful of ale or wine. Half fill some small paper trays with the mixture, and bake the ramakins in a gentle oven, or in a Dutch oven before the fire. Serve very hot. Time to bake, a quarter of an hour.
A Victorian cheese savoury, closer to a soft baked cheese custard than to the sweet or vegetable ramekins of later cookbooks. The mixture is rich and loose, so it lives or dies by being served the moment it comes out of the oven.
- "Paper trays" and the word ramakinIn this period the ramakin was the mixture, not the dish; it was baked in small cases folded from stiff paper. Modern ramekins filled halfway do the same job, as do paper muffin cases in a tin. The number you get will depend on the size of the cases.
- A gentle ovenNo temperature is given; a modern reading of a gentle oven is somewhere around 300-325F. The mixture is essentially an egg-yolk custard bound with cheese and butter, and it will curdle and weep fat if pushed hotter. Fifteen minutes at that heat should give a just-set centre.
- The crumb of a French rollThe soft interior only, crust discarded, from a small white roll. A cupful of cream is usually read as about 8 fl oz, though period cup measures varied; the crumb is soaked in it and the whole goes into the mortar.
- Wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books a wine-glass is about 2 fl oz. Ale gives a maltier, sharper result; a dry white or sherry gives a cleaner one. Either way the alcohol thins the paste noticeably, so add it last and judge the consistency.
- Cheshire cheeseA firm, crumbly, salty cow's-milk cheese. Supermarket Cheshire varies; a mature Lancashire or a dry, sharp white Cheddar behaves the same way in the oven. Avoid anything very young and wet, which will release water into the custard.
- The mortarPounding is to get the bread, cheese and butter into one smooth paste. A food processor does it in seconds, but stop before the mixture warms and the butter separates, then beat in the yolks by hand.
- Dutch oven before the fireAn open-fronted metal reflector set facing the hearth, which cooked by radiant heat. The nearest modern equivalent is a low grill with the dishes well back from the element, though a conventional oven is more reliable here.
- ServingThe recipe insists on serving them very hot, so bake them last and carry them straight to the table, one or two per person, as a savoury course or with a green salad.
Ramequin comes into English cookery from French in the eighteenth century, and for most of its life it meant a hot cheese preparation baked in small cases rather than the porcelain dish the word now brings to mind. The recipe belongs to the era of the English savoury, the small hot salty course served after the sweet and before dessert at a formal dinner, when cheese in some heated form was thought, by the dietary belief of the day, to settle the stomach and suit the wine still on the table. The use of Cheshire is a period marker in itself: it was one of the great English market cheeses of the nineteenth century, sold in enormous quantities in London. Softening bread in hot cream and pounding it with cheese and butter is an older technique, related to the cheese puddings and toasted-cheese dishes that run right through English cookery, and the ale here is a domestic touch.