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Cheese Ramakin

A baked cheese and breadcrumb mixture with eggs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Ramakin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine bread crumbs and milk; bring to a boil.

  2. Add butter, egg yolks, grated cheese, salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper; mix well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve hot for lunch or tea.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air that lifts the mixture as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to thicken the base and give it body.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps the dish brown and firm as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs absorb and the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Overmixing knocks that air out, so the dish will rise less in the oven and turn denser.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, egg, cheese, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, egg, cheese, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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