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Ox Eyes
Cut some slices of stale bread three-quarters of an inch in thickness. Toast them, stamp them in rounds three inches in diameter, and take out of the middle of each round a smaller round one inch and a half in diameter; be careful to leave the rings firm and unbroken. Place them on a well-buttered dish, and let them soak in sour cream until they are soft, then lay a raw egg in the middle of each ring. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them and put a tea-spoonful of milk on each egg. Put them in a hot oven, and let them remain until the whites are set, but they must not brown. Garnish with water-cress. Time, ten minutes to set the eggs. If liked, the bread can be floured well and fried in fat. The eggs may then be poached separately. Probable cost of half a dozen ox eyes, 8d.
A Victorian egg-in-a-hole, baked rather than fried, with the toast ring softened in soured cream before the egg goes in. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the soak: too little and the bread stays leathery, too much and the ring collapses.
- The soured creamThis meant cream that had gone acid naturally, thin enough to be absorbed by toast. Modern cultured sour cream is far too thick to soak in; slacken it with milk to the consistency of pouring cream, or use crème fraîche loosened the same way, or buttermilk.
- "A hot oven"The recipe gives no temperature; a Victorian hot oven is generally read as somewhere in the region of 425-450F, but the instruction not to let the eggs brown pulls against that. Bake at 375-400F and watch from six minutes; ten minutes in a very hot oven will colour the whites and toughen them.
- Doneness"Until the whites are set" leaves the yolks liquid, which is the point of the dish. If you want the yolks firm, or you are cooking for anyone who should avoid soft-set egg, give them longer and accept that the whites will firm considerably.
- Cutting the ringsA 3-inch round cutter and a 1½-inch one, or a glass and a bottle cap. Toast the bread first, as written, then stamp: toasted bread cuts cleanly and holds its shape through the soaking, where fresh bread tears.
- Bread thicknessThree-quarters of an inch is thicker than most sliced loaves. Cut it yourself from a firm white tin loaf a day or two old; thin supermarket slices will not hold an egg.
- The teaspoon of milkPoured over each egg, as the recipe directs; it presumably keeps the surface from drying and setting into a skin in the oven. Worth doing, and cream works as well.
- The fried variationFlouring and frying the rings, then poaching the eggs separately and setting them in, is the more forgiving route: you control the egg exactly and the toast stays crisp.
- Yield and costSix ox eyes for 8d, so this is a supper or breakfast dish at roughly one to two per person. Allow one egg per ring; the inner rounds can be cooked separately rather than wasted.
The name is straightforwardly descriptive: a round white with a dark eye at the centre, the same visual joke behind the many regional names for egg fried in a hole in bread. The recipe comes with a variation attached and a price attached to that — the book was aimed at households counting pence, and 8d for six was cheap enough to make it a plausible breakfast rather than a flourish. The soured cream is the detail that dates it most clearly: before reliable refrigeration, cream that had turned was an everyday ingredient with its own uses rather than something thrown out, and Victorian and Edwardian cookery books absorb it into soups, scones, dressings and dishes like this one without comment.