Home › Savoury Entremets › Savoury Entremets
Savoury Entremets
Soufflé au Parmesan is a cheese soufflé. As Petits soufflés, it is served in small paper cases. Little steamed soufflés are sometimes called Petits zéphyrs de fromage.
Fondue au Parmesan is a cheese fondu, baked in a soufflé dish or paper case, or steamed. à la Napolitaine has the addition of short pieces of macaroni; au Stilton, of small dice of Stilton cheese. They may be served in little cases as Petites fondues.
Ramequins are made of milk, flour, eggs, grated Parmesan, etc., baked in paper cases. à la Raymond are made with Gruyère cheese, and are baked in small lumps. à la Sefton, or au feuilletage, are small shapes of puff paste with grated Gruyère and Parmesan cheese. à la Genevoise-grated cheese with cream, baked on slices of bread.
Salade au fromage is composed of beetroot and celery with a cheese Mayonnaise sauce, garnished with small salad and hard-boiled egg.
A short chapter and it is all cheese, baked in small portions, in cases. That is not a coincidence; it is what a savoury course was.
- A ramequin is the food, not the dishHere ramequins are a baked mixture of milk, flour, eggs and Parmesan. The word has since moved off the food and onto the little pot, which is one of the cleaner examples of a cooking term changing hands.
- Fondue meant bakedFondue au Parmesan goes into a soufflé dish or a paper case, baked or steamed. Nothing on this page is melted in a pot and nothing is dipped into. The word here means a mixture that has gone soft and homogeneous in the oven.
- Stilton behaves differentlyThe Stilton version folds small dice of a blue cheese into the mixture. A blue breaks rather than stretches, and it carries far more salt than Parmesan or Gruyère, so it seasons the whole dish from the inside. Cut the added salt and keep the dice small.
- Zéphyr means steamedPetits zéphyrs de fromage are soufflés cooked in steam rather than dry heat. They rise less and set damper, and they hold their shape for longer after they come out, which is the only reason anyone would choose the method.
- Paper cases, once more, for a reasonEach person gets their own baked portion without the kitchen owning thirty small china dishes. It is the logic of a muffin paper, and it also means the thing is served in what it cooked in, still hot.
Think about what it takes to serve each guest an individual cheese soufflé at the end of a long dinner. A soufflé cannot wait; it has to leave the oven and reach a seated table within a minute or two, hot, in a paper case, one for everybody. That tells you how short the distance was between the kitchen and the dining room in a house like this, and how many pairs of hands were standing in it. The savoury course was small and salty and came near the end, and its real cost was never in the cheese.