Birds' Nests
Have prepared slices of buttered toast, and on each slice put the beaten white of an egg in the shape of a bird's nest. In the center place the yolk, seasoning with a small piece of butter, pepper and salt. Bake in a quick oven until the whites are delicately browned.
A meringue-and-yolk breakfast dish that lives or dies on the oven being hot and the baking being short. Everything here happens in under ten minutes.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400-450F. Much slower and the meringue dries out before it takes any colour.
- The hinge: separate cleanlyA trace of yolk in the whites will hamper whipping. Crack cold, then let the whites stand until they lose their chill before beating; they are generally reckoned to whip higher at room temperature.
- How stiffBeat to firm peaks that hold a hollow when you press the back of a spoon in. Past that point the whites turn grainy and weep a watery liquid onto the toast.
- Season the whites lastSalt beaten into whites early slackens the foam. Add the pepper and salt to the yolk and the surrounding butter instead, as the recipe implies.
- TimingFive to eight minutes at that heat. "Delicately browned" means faintly tan at the peaks, not evenly golden. Watch it rather than trusting a clock.
- The yolk will stay softAt this time and temperature the yolk sets only at the surface. If a runny yolk is not wanted, use pasteurised eggs or choose a different dish; longer baking collapses the nest.
- Toast choiceUse a sturdy, well-toasted slice, thick cut. Soft sandwich bread goes soggy under the meringue and cannot be lifted off the pan intact.
- YieldOne egg makes one nest on one slice. Reckon two per person for breakfast, one for a light supper or a plate for an invalid.
Eggs "in a nest" turn up under several names in American and English cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, usually filed with breakfast dishes and invalid cookery, where the aim was something light, digestible and pretty on the plate. The trick is nothing more than a savoury application of meringue, a technique the same books used for pie tops and floating island, and it suited the era's fondness for a dish that could be assembled from a single egg, a slice of bread and a little butter.