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Eggs à la Bonne Femme
Peel and chop fine I large white onion. Fry slowly in a frying-pan with I heaping tablespoonful of butter. When a delicate brown, spread over the bottom of a pie plate or shallow dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Over this break carefully as many eggs as the dish will accommodate and place in a moderate oven until set. Sprinkle over the top 2 tablespoonfuls of bread crumbs fried in a little butter and send at once to the table.
A shirred-egg dish that depends entirely on the onion being cooked long enough and the eggs not a minute too long. Everything else is assembly.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F; the lower end suits this dish. It is shallow and the eggs set quickly, so anything hotter will toughen the whites before the yolks warm through.
- TimingThe original gives none. Expect 8 to 12 minutes for whites just set and yolks still loose; they will continue to firm on the hot plate after they leave the oven, so pull them slightly under.
- Onion, slowly"Fry slowly" is the hinge. Fifteen to twenty minutes on low heat gives the sweet base the recipe wants; the original asks only for "a delicate brown." Rushed onion scorches and turns bitter, and there is nothing else in the recipe to hide behind.
- The dishA pie plate works, as written, but any shallow ovenproof dish or a cast-iron skillet is better because it holds heat and the eggs set more evenly. Butter it before the onion goes in.
- Bread crumbsFresh crumbs from a real loaf, fried in butter until golden, not dry commercial crumbs, which stay sandy. Fry them while the eggs bake and add them at the last moment or they soften.
- Quantity and yield"As many eggs as the dish will accommodate" is perhaps four to six in a pie plate of ordinary size, without crowding. Call it two servings as a light supper, or three to four alongside toast and something else.
- SeasoningThe salt and pepper go under the eggs, which does little for the whites. Season again lightly on top before baking.
À la bonne femme — "in the style of the good wife" — is standard French menu shorthand for a plain domestic treatment, with the garnish varying by dish, and it attaches to soups, potatoes and fish as readily as to eggs. Baking eggs in a shallow dish over a savoury base is the technique the French call œufs sur le plat or shirred eggs, and it turns four or five eggs, an onion and a heel of stale bread into a meal that comes to the table looking composed.