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Eggs in Paper Cases
Make a seasoning with a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, one of green onions, a clove of garlic, some pepper, salt, and a cupful of fine bread-crumbs. Have ready some small paper cases; dissolve some butter and paint the inside of the cases with a small brush till they are lined thickly with it, then sprinkle a little seasoning into each. Break six eggs singly into a cup, and put one on the top of the crumbs in each case, and cover with more. Bake in a gentle oven until the eggs are set. Serve in the cases. If preferred, the eggs can be baked in small moulds, and can be turned on to a dish for serving.
A simple baked egg, the Victorian ancestor of oeufs en cocotte. Almost everything hinges on the butter: the paper must be saturated with it or it scorches and sticks.
- Paper casesStiff greaseproof or parchment cases, folded or bought ready-made, sized to hold a single egg with its crumbs. Modern parchment muffin liners set inside a muffin tin work, as do individual ramekins or small ovenproof dishes; foil cases will not brown the crumbs as kindly.
- Butter the paper thicklyPainting the inside "thickly" is not decorative. Unbuttered paper dries out, browns hard at the rim and welds itself to the crumbs. Use melted butter and a pastry brush, and go over the case twice.
- A gentle ovenRead this as 300-325F. Baked eggs turn granular and weep if pushed hotter; a water bath around the cases or ramekins gives an even softer set.
- Green onionsSpring onions or scallions, finely chopped; the green tops can be used as well as the white.
- The garlicOne clove for six eggs is assertive for Victorian English cooking. Mince it very fine or, gentler still, rub the cut clove around the inside of the buttered case before the crumbs go in.
- Crumbs"Fine bread-crumbs" may be fresh or dry; fresh crumbs are the safer choice here, as dry ones drink up the butter. Season the whole cupful with the herbs, pepper and salt before dividing it between the cases.
- Timing and donenessNo time is given. Expect 12-18 minutes: the white should be opaque and just firm, the yolk still soft. Carryover heat continues in the case, so pull them a shade under.
- Turning out of mouldsIf using small metal moulds instead of paper, butter them heavily and let the eggs stand a minute before unmoulding, or the crumb crust will tear.
- YieldSix cases: a first course or light supper for three to six, depending on what surrounds it.
Baked eggs in individual cases were a standing item of the nineteenth-century English kitchen's French borrowings, closely related to oeufs en cocotte and to the older practice of serving small savouries in caisses of folded paper. The paper case portioned the dish neatly for a served table, and Cassell's offers small metal moulds only as an alternative. The seasoning here, parsley with green onion and garlic in buttered crumbs, is close to a persillade u2014 which is properly parsley and garlic, with the green onion and crumbs added u2014 and its presence in a general household dictionary shows how far French flavourings had settled into ordinary English cooking by the late Victorian period. Eggs were cheap, and a book of this kind needed a great many ways to make six of them look like a course.