Home › Egg Recipes › Swiss Eggs
Swiss Eggs
6 tablespoonfuls butter 1 gill (1/2 cup) cream Salt and pepper Swiss cheese f Melt the butter in a fireproof baking dish, break into it the eggs, cover them with very thin slices of Swiss cheese, and sprinkle over a little salt and pepper. Bake in a moderate oven till the eggs are set and the cheese melted. 3 eggs
A three-egg gratin that comes together in about fifteen minutes. The ingredient list and the method have been mangled slightly in printing, so read both before you start.
- The missing creamThe gill of cream appears in the ingredients but never in the method. The obvious remedy is to pour it over the eggs before or just after the cheese goes on; without it the dish is simply baked eggs with cheese and will set drier and faster.
- A gillHalf a cup, as the original helpfully notes. For three eggs that is a generous amount of cream and will keep the whites soft.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; "moderate" is usually read today as somewhere around 350F. The dish is shallow and small, so expect roughly 10 to 15 minutes.
- Fireproof baking dishMelting the butter in the dish implies earthenware or metal that will take direct heat and then go into the oven. A small cast-iron or enamelled skillet, or an oven-safe gratin dish with the butter melted in the oven, does the same job.
- Judging donenessPull the dish when the whites are just opaque and the yolks still tremble. Carryover heat in a heavy dish will keep cooking them for a minute or two after they leave the oven, and set yolks are the usual failure here.
- The cheeseGenuine Swiss in this context means Emmental or Gruyere. Slice it as thinly as the recipe says, or grate it. Thick slices sit on top as a rubbery lid rather than melting into the cream.
- SeasoningGruyere and Emmental are salty. Season the cream and the whites lightly and taste before adding more.
- YieldThree eggs serves one as a main course or two as a light first course, with bread for the cream at the bottom of the dish.
Baked eggs under cheese and cream turn up across turn-of-the-century English and American cookery under several names, most often oeufs au gratin, shirred eggs or, as here, Swiss eggs, the last often said to signal the cheese rather than any Swiss origin. The dish belongs to a genre of small oven-set egg preparations that flourished once households had reliable enclosed ranges and cheap fireproof pottery. The appeal of the fireproof dish was that it went from burner to oven to table, and this is a recipe that melts butter on the stove and finishes in the oven.