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Cheese Custards
4 ozs. (1 cup) grated cheese Salt and pepper to taste 2 eggs 1/2 pint (I cup) milk A few sprigs parsley Mix the eggs and milk in a saucepan over the fire, stir them till they thicken slightly, remove from the fire, and add the cheese, salt, and pepper.
Divide into small china ramequin cases and bake until brown.
Serve with a small sprig of parsley in the center of each.
A small savoury custard, essentially a cheese-thickened egg mixture finished in the oven. The whole thing hinges on not letting the egg-and-milk base cook past a light thickening on the stove.
- The critical stepStir the eggs and milk over low heat only until they coat the spoon — roughly the consistency of thin cream, at about 170F. A second too long and the eggs scramble, and no amount of baking will smooth them out again. Take the pan off the heat before it looks ready, since the residual heat carries it further.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, as was usual in books of this kind. A moderate oven, 325-350F, should brown the tops without curdling the custard; start checking at about 15-20 minutes, since the recipe's only instruction is to bake until brown. A roasting pan of hot water reaching halfway up the ramekins is worth the trouble.
- Ramequin cases"China ramequin cases" are simply ramekins — 4 oz porcelain or earthenware cups. This quantity fills four of them, or three slightly larger ones.
- MeasuresThe book's helpful parentheses do the work: 4 oz grated cheese is a cup loosely packed, and 1/2 pint is 1 cup in American measure. Weigh the cheese if you can; grated volume varies wildly with the grater.
- Which cheeseUnspecified. A firm dry cheese is the right choice — Cheddar, Cheshire or Parmesan all suit; young, wet cheeses release fat and water and the custards weep.
- Adding the cheese off the heatStirring the cheese into the hot base rather than the cold does most of the melting, and keeps it from stringing and separating in the oven. Season at this point, remembering the cheese brings its own salt.
- ServingThese are a first course or a light supper dish for two to four, and they should go to the table straight from the oven, with the parsley sprig set in the centre of each as the book directs.
Baked cheese custards belong to the long family of English and French cheese savouries — ramequins, cheese pudding, fondue in its older baked sense — that filled the last course of a Victorian and Edwardian dinner, after the sweet and before the fruit. The spelling "ramequin" over the now-standard "ramekin" is a period marker, and the word itself is generally traced to a Germanic root for cream or curd, borrowed into French for a small cheese preparation long before it came to mean the dish it was baked in.