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Baked Eggs, or Eggs Sur Le Plat
Use individual baking-dishes and melt one teaspoon of butter in each dish. Break the eggs into the dishes, allowing one or two eggs to a dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place a tiny piece of butter on each. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) until the eggs are set but not hard. Serve in the baking-dishes.
One of the simplest egg dishes in the book, and one where the only real variable is time. The original gives its own oven temperature, which is unusual and helpful.
- The hinge: pull them earlyBaked eggs carry over considerably in a hot ceramic dish. Take them out when the whites are just barely set and still glossy on top; they will finish on the way to the table.
- TimingAt 350F, allow roughly 10 to 14 minutes for one egg per dish, a few minutes more for two. Ovens and dish thickness vary enough that you should judge by the whites, not the clock.
- "Individual baking-dishes"Probably small shallow ceramic or glass dishes, on the order of 4 to 5 inches across and an inch deep, though the recipe does not specify. Ramekins will work; their deeper sides set the whites more slowly, so shallow dishes are generally easier to judge.
- Preheat the butterSet the buttered dishes in the oven for a minute or two before cracking the eggs in. The whites begin to set on contact and are less likely to spread thin and toughen at the edges.
- Egg sizeOlder recipes often assumed eggs somewhat smaller than a modern large graded egg, so two modern large eggs may fill a small dish generously.
- Salt placementSalt sprinkled directly on the yolk can leave pale speckles. Season the white, or salt after baking.
- YieldOne or two eggs per person; a breakfast or light supper course. Toast is a natural accompaniment, though the recipe calls only for serving in the baking-dishes.
Sur le plat means simply "on the plate" or "in the dish" — the French term for eggs cooked and served in the same small vessel, without turning or stirring. The style was long established in French cookery and passed into American cookbooks under both the English and French names. A stated oven temperature is a useful dating clue: thermostatically controlled gas and electric ranges spread through American kitchens from the late 1910s onward, and cookbooks increasingly supplemented or replaced the older language of "quick" and "moderate" ovens with figures a dial could be set to.