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Eggs and Burnt Butter
Prepare half a dozen eggs as if for poaching, by breaking each one separately into a cup. Brown three ounces of butter in a large frying-pan, and slide the eggs from the cups into it; when they have well set, ladle the burnt butter over them, and sprinkle with salt and some nutmeg. Serve on toast wetted with vinegar. Time, from two and a half to three and a half minutes, according to size of eggs. Sufficient, two eggs for each person.
A brisk French-style fried egg dish — oeufs au beurre noir — that depends entirely on how far you take the butter. Six eggs, three servings.
- "Burnt" butter is not burnt"Burnt" butter is not scorched butter -- The French beurre noir is butter cooked past the nut-brown noisette stage to a dark brown, though not to the point of acrid blackness, which is a failure rather than the goal. Judge it by colour and smell and pull the pan while it is still deep russet.
- Three ounces of butterAbout 6 tablespoons, or 85 g. It is a generous amount because it doubles as the sauce, so use a pan wide enough that the eggs sit in a single layer without crowding.
- Break the eggs into cups firstNot fussiness. With butter this hot you have no time to fish out shell or discard a bad egg, and the cups let all six go in within a few seconds of each other so they finish together.
- The timing is for the whites onlyThe timing is short -- Two and a half to three and a half minutes will set the whites while leaving the yolks soft; the recipe says only "when they have well set" and does not specify the yolk. Anyone who prefers eggs cooked through should say so — the yolks will not reach a pasteurising temperature in this time.
- The vinegar toastSprinkle or brush the toast with a little sharp vinegar — cider or white wine, perhaps a teaspoon per slice — rather than soaking it. The acid cuts the browned butter; in beurre noir preparations the vinegar is often instead swirled into the hot pan at the end, which is easier to control.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a restrained hand; pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of what makes it worth adding here.
- Heat managementBrown the butter, then lower the heat before the eggs go in. Butter at browning temperature will blister the whites into lace and toughen them before the yolks warm through.
This is the English kitchen's rendering of oeufs au beurre noir, a dish of nineteenth-century French cooking that appears in English books of the period. The technique is older and broader than the dish: browning butter to draw out its nutty flavour, then sharpening it with vinegar or capers, is the basis of the sauce served with skate and with brains, and eggs simply borrow it. The vinegar-wetted toast is the frankly period touch; it does the same work as the caper or vinegar finish in the fish version, but puts the acid where it will not split the butter.