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Cheese Ramekins

A baked cheese dish made with milk-soaked breadcrumbs, butter, cheese, mustard, cayenne, and eggs.

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 Ramekins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Pour boiling milk over dry bread crumbs and let them soften.

  2. Drain any unabsorbed milk.

  3. Stir in butter, grated cheese, mixed mustard, salt, cayenne, and egg yolks, then mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes.

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. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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 and lift the mixture as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the custard-like base as it sets.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they form the soft body of the ramekin.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and helps the mixture set as it cools.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and moistens the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff and folded in gently just before baking. Overmixing deflates the foam, and the air it holds is what lifts the ramekins in the oven.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, cheese, egg. 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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