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Steamed Eggs
Butter an individual baking dish generously and put in the egg. Season, place in a steamer over boiling water, and cook until the white is firm. Put a small piece of butter on the top and serve very hot.
A single-egg recipe with no times, no temperatures and no quantities — everything depends on judging when the white sets. A few notes make it repeatable.
- The hinge: gentle heat, lid onSteam surrounds the egg at about 212F, which sets the white without the rubbery, bubbled edge a hot pan gives. The recipe says boiling water; a steady rather than a violent boil will keep the dish from rattling.
- TimingIn a covered steamer, an individual dish takes roughly 5 to 7 minutes for a firm white and a still-liquid yolk, 9 to 10 minutes for a set yolk. Start checking early; a minute past the point of setting changes the texture noticeably.
- "Individual baking dish"A ramekin, cocotte or small custard cup of 4 to 6 oz. Something shallow and wide sets faster and more evenly than a tall narrow cup.
- If you have no steamerA metal colander or a folded towel in a wide covered pan works, as does a plate set on a canning ring above an inch of simmering water. The dish must sit above the water, not in it.
- Butter it properly"Generously" is doing real work here: egg protein grips ceramic hard, and a thin film will not release. Butter well up the sides as well as the base.
- SeasonSalt and pepper, added before cooking. Salting the raw white is sometimes said to give a slightly softer set, which is no disadvantage in a dish aiming for tenderness.
- YieldOne egg per person as written — a breakfast or invalid-cookery portion. Scale by the number of dishes, and add a minute or two if the steamer is crowded.
Steaming eggs in buttered cups belongs to the tradition of "plain cookery" and sickroom food that ran through English and American household manuals from the mid-nineteenth century onward: fat-free or nearly so, easily digested, served in the vessel it cooked in. The technique itself is very old and very widespread: gentle steam is the standard way of setting an egg custard everywhere from a French oeuf en cocotte in a bain-marie to Chinese and Japanese savoury steamed egg, all of them relying on the same fact that egg proteins set well below the boil and are spoiled by anything hotter.