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Cheese Ramequins No.2
4 ounces grated cheese 3 ounces bread crumbs 1 small teaspoon mixed mustard 1/2 pint milk 1 ounce butter Boil the milk, and pour over it the bread crumbs, and let them stand on the stove, covered up, for a quarter of an hour. Now mix in the grated cheese, mustard and butter. Butter some little china ramequin cases, and fill them three parts full of the mixture. Bake for about ten minutes in a hot oven, and serve immediately.
A savoury of the old British type: hot cheese custard without the custard, since there is no egg to set it. Expect something closer to a soft cheese pudding than a soufflé, and serve it the moment it leaves the oven.
- Hot ovenRead "hot oven" as roughly 425-450F (220-230C). Ten minutes at that heat browns the tops and heats the mixture through, which is already warm from the stovetop soak, so nothing needs longer.
- The half pintHalf a pint is 10 fl oz in British measure, 8 fl oz in American; the vocabulary here ("mixed mustard", "ramequin cases") points to a British book, so 10 fl oz. Add the milk to the crumbs and judge the result — the mixture should be thick enough to mound on a spoon, not pourable.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs from stale white bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more milk and turn the mixture pasty. Three ounces of soft crumbs is roughly 1 1/2 cups, loosely packed.
- Mixed mustard"Mixed" means mustard powder already made up with water into a paste, i.e. ordinary prepared English mustard. A small teaspoon of the modern jarred kind is right; if using powder, use about half as much and slake it in a little water first.
- The cheeseA firm dry cheese grates and melts best here — Cheddar, Cheshire, or Gruyère. Four ounces is about a cup grated. Add it off the heat, after the crumbs have swelled, so it melts rather than seizes into strings.
- Standing on the stoveThe quarter hour covered on the stove is a soak, not a simmer. Pull the pan to the coolest corner of a low burner or off the heat entirely; direct heat will scorch the milk at the bottom.
- Ramekin casesSmall ovenproof china or stoneware dishes of 3-4 fl oz. Filling them only three parts full matters less without egg.
- YieldEnough for four to six small ramekins, which in period terms is a savoury course for four. As a light lunch with salad it serves two.
Ramequins belong to the British savoury course — the small hot dish, usually cheese or anchovy or marrow, served after the sweet and before the dessert of fruit and nuts, a sequence peculiar to English dining. The word came from the French ramequin, a cheese preparation baked in individual dishes, and at some point English usage transferred the name to the dish itself, which is how a ramekin ended up being a piece of crockery rather than something to eat. This version omits eggs entirely and leans on bread crumbs soaked in milk for body — a hot, filling course built from cheese, bread and milk.