Fried Eggs
Melt in a frying-pan a large piece of butter; or use the fat of ham or bacon. When hot, drop in the eggs, one at a time, being careful not to break the yolk. When the white of the egg Planned for s is set they are done, though some persons like them turned over and cooked on the other side. Remove from the pan with a caketurner and serve at once.
Barely a recipe by modern standards, but the instructions carry a few assumptions worth spelling out for anyone cooking on an electric range rather than a wood or gas stove.
- The garbled lineThe phrase "When the white of the egg Planned for s is set" contains an intruded fragment of unrelated text. Read it simply as "When the white of the egg is set."
- Heat, not just hotThe recipe says only "when hot." On a modern burner, medium-low to medium is the safe reading; anything higher and the edges blister and go lacy before the white near the yolk has firmed.
- A large piece of butterA tablespoon or so per two eggs in a 10-inch pan is ample. Bacon or ham fat, as offered here, gives a browner, saltier edge from the salt and browned residues it carries.
- Cake-turnerA cake-turner is a thin, flat metal spatula, essentially what is now sold as a fish or egg turner. Any wide flexible slotted spatula does the job; the point is a broad blade that slides under without tearing the white.
- Doneness and safety"When the white is set" leaves the yolk liquid, which is how sunny-side-up eggs are still served. Set whites do not guarantee the yolk has reached a pasteurizing temperature, so cook the second side for anyone who should avoid runny yolks.
- Covering the panThe book's alternative is to turn the egg over. Setting a lid on the pan for the last thirty seconds achieves much the same thing by steaming the top of the white while leaving the yolk soft, and avoids the risk of breaking it.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Fry in batches rather than crowding, since eggs added all at once drop the pan temperature and spread into one another.
Cookbooks of this kind leaned heavily on short, memory-jogging entries for things every cook already knew how to do. A fried egg needed no teaching; what the entry actually records is the assumption that the fat would be whatever the kitchen had at hand, ham or bacon drippings included. The choice between a white left glossy and one turned and cooked through is left to taste here, a division that echoes the American diner vocabulary of sunny-side up, over easy and over hard.