Home › The Principles of Cookery › EGGS (a la Francaise)
EGGS (a la Francaise)
A very common and simple mode of dressing eggs is to slide them as if for poaching on to a well-buttered tin dish, and set them over the fire or in an oven until the whites are set. This is a favourite way of cooking them in France and Germany, where eggs are plentiful and cheap. Time, four or five minutes to dress.
This is shirred or baked eggs, stripped to its essentials. The whole method hinges on gentle, even heat and a dish that holds it without scorching the butter.
- "Tin dish" means a shallow metal panA small enamelled or heavy metal gratin dish, a cast-iron skillet, or individual ramekins all work. Avoid thin, light tin, which gives a hot spot under each yolk and rubbery whites before the tops set.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. If the four to five minutes is taken literally, the modern equivalent would be a hot oven, roughly 400-425F, with the dish preheated and the butter melted before the eggs go in; at 350F allow closer to ten minutes.
- Over the fireOn the stovetop this is a covered low-heat operation. Melt the butter over the lowest flame, slide in the eggs, cover, and let the trapped steam set the tops of the whites rather than cranking the heat.
- "Slide them as if for poaching"Break each egg into a cup first and tip it in, so a broken yolk or a stale egg can be discarded before it joins the others. Eggs also spread less if they go in one at a time and are given room.
- When it is doneThe white should be opaque throughout, including the thin collar around the yolk, and the yolk still liquid. The residual heat of a metal dish keeps cooking after it leaves the oven, so pull it a shade early.
- Butter well, and mean itThe single instruction that decides the dish. An underbuttered pan welds the whites to the metal and the eggs tear coming out; a film of butter also stops the bottoms from turning leathery.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; two eggs per person is a reasonable portion. Salt after cooking rather than before -- salt on a raw yolk is commonly said to leave pale spots -- and serve straight from the dish with toast.
- Soft yolksThe yolks here are not fully cooked. For anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, use pasteurised eggs or cook until the yolk is firm.
What Cassell's calls eggs "a la Francaise" corresponds to what is often called shirred eggs -- chiefly an American term -- and to the French oeufs sur le plat, eggs on the dish, which are cooked and brought to table in the same vessel. The aside about eggs being "plentiful and cheap" in France and Germany is the interesting part: in late Victorian Britain eggs were a seasonal and, in winter, an expensive commodity, and large numbers were imported from the Continent.