Home › Eggs › Eggs in Tomato Cups
Eggs in Tomato Cups
For each person allow 1 egg and I tomato.
Cut a piece from the stem end of the tomato and with a spoon scoop out the center. Sprinkle the cavity with chopped tarragon or a few drops of tarragon vinegar. Break and carefully drop I raw egg in each. Place apart on a buttered pan and bake in a moderate oven until the eggs are set. Serve with or without a cream sauce.
A one-pan egg dish that depends entirely on choosing the right tomato and pulling the pan before the whites turn to rubber. The original gives no times or temperatures, so the numbers below are the practical ones.
- Moderate ovenSet the oven to 350F. At much above that the tomato collapses before the white sets; much below and the egg weeps.
- Choose a firm tomatoUse a large, firm, slightly underripe tomato that will stand on its own — roughly 3 inches across, so the cavity holds a whole egg without overflowing. A soft ripe one slumps in the oven and floods the pan.
- Drain the shell firstAfter scooping, salt the inside lightly and invert the tomato on a rack or paper for ten minutes. Tomatoes are mostly water, and that water otherwise thins the egg and steams it rather than baking it.
- TimingExpect 18 to 25 minutes at 350F, depending on tomato size. The white should be opaque and just firm at the edge with the yolk still soft; carryover heat inside the tomato keeps cooking it after it leaves the oven.
- Keep them upright"Place apart on a buttered pan" reads as spacing them so they are not crowded together. A muffin tin or individual ramekins hold them steady better than a flat sheet and stop tipped eggs.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth using — a few drops only, since it is sharp. Dried tarragon fades badly, so fresh is generally the better choice here; about a quarter teaspoon chopped per tomato.
- The cream sauceA plain thin white sauce suits it: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, cooked out and seasoned. Spoon it around the tomatoes rather than over them so the eggs stay visible.
- YieldOne tomato and one egg per person is a light lunch or supper dish, not a main course. Two each with toast makes a meal.
Baking an egg inside a hollowed vegetable belongs to a family of turn-of-the-century "shirred" and "en cocotte" egg dishes, where the ramekin, the tomato or the potato skin does the work of a pan. Eggs and tomatoes were cheap, and dressing them up this way let a cook serve something that looked composed without meat. The tarragon is a French touch that had settled into American household cookery by this period, often reaching the kitchen as tarragon vinegar rather than as the fresh herb, which was harder to find outside a kitchen garden. The option to serve "with or without a cream sauce" leaves the dish plain or turns it into a course.