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Cheese Dainties
3 heaping tablespoonfuls Parmesan cheese 4 eggs 1/4 pint (1/2 cup) milk Salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste Bring the milk to boiling point, pour it over the eggs well beaten, add the cheese, salt, pepper, and red pepper; pour into some buttered cocottes or ramequins. Stand the cases in a pan, pour in some hot water; place in the oven and cook till set.
Garnish with parsley and serve hot.
A savoury baked custard in miniature — four eggs to half a cup of milk makes an unusually rich, cheese-heavy set. The whole method turns on gentle heat.
- Red pepper is cayenneIn books of this period "red pepper" means ground cayenne, not paprika or a fresh capsicum. A pinch is enough against three tablespoons of Parmesan.
- Cocottes and ramequinsBoth here mean small individual ovenproof cases, commonly around 4 oz, though "cocotte" can also mean a larger pot. The mixture comes to roughly 11 fl oz, enough for three or four such cases. Butter them well, as the custard grips.
- Temper the eggsPour the scalded milk over the beaten eggs in a thin stream while whisking. Tipping it in all at once risks partly scrambling the eggs before they reach the oven.
- "Cook till set" means a moderate oven"Cook till set" -- The recipe gives no oven heat. A moderate oven, around 325-350F, suits a custard of this kind: hotter and it tends to puff, weep and turn grainy, which is why the water bath is there.
- The water bathHot water should come halfway up the sides of the cases. A folded cloth or paper in the base of the pan stops them rattling and shields the bottoms.
- Judging donenessRoughly twenty-five to thirty minutes, depending on the size of the cases. The centre should still wobble slightly when the dish is nudged, at around 170-175F; a knife inserted off-centre should come out clean, but wait for a completely clean knife at the centre and it will likely be slightly overcooked.
- The cheeseUse Parmesan grated fine and freshly, not the powdered kind. Three heaping tablespoons is about an ounce, and it carries all the seasoning, so salt cautiously.
- Yield and serviceThree or four small custards, enough for as many as a savoury course or light supper dish. The recipe says to serve them hot; they sink somewhat and stiffen as they cool.
Small savoury custards baked in individual pots belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian taste for the *savoury* — a hot, sharply seasoned course served after the sweet at dinner, particularly in British households, and cheese was its dominant flavour. The vessels give the game away: *cocotte* and *ramequin* are both French borrowings that entered English kitchen vocabulary, *ramekin* from the early eighteenth century and *cocotte* rather later, and *ramequin* originally described a baked cheese preparation itself before the word slid across to mean the dish it was baked in. That this recipe appears in such a book reflects a period fashion for earthenware and fireproof china, which allowed food to travel from oven to table in the same vessel — a novelty then worth writing a whole book about.</historyplaceholder>