Ramekin

Ramekin and the corresponding French word ramequin are both derived, according to Graham (1988), from the Flemish rammeken, the diminutive of ram, meaning cream. Thus the basic meaning of the term is ‘a little cream’. It seems always to have involved cheese, but Graham points out that it has:

been used over the centuries to describe almost anything from Welsh rabbit or a melted cheese sandwich to a cheese-flavoured egg custard, tartlet, soufflé, pudding or puff. It later came to be applied also, by metonymy, to the receptacle in which some types of ramekin were cooked.