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Eggs in Bacon Rings
6 long slices of bacon 6 eggs Salt and pepper Garnish of parsley Curl slices of bacon around the inside of muffin-cups or small ramekins. Break an egg inside each bacon-ring, season with salt and pepper and bake until set, but not hard. Remove carefully from the dish so that the egg will remain fastened to the bacon. Arrange on a platter and garnish with parsley.
A 1920s breakfast standard that survives on menus as the "egg nest." The original assumes a hot bacon-friendly oven and gives no temperature, so the timing is where this needs help.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given; bake at 350F. Higher than that sets the whites before the yolks warm through and toughens the edges against the metal.
- Par-cook the baconAn egg is set in 12 to 15 minutes, which is not long enough to render raw bacon. Fry the slices briefly until pliable but still limp, drain, then curl them into the cups so both finish together.
- Which cupA regular 12-cup tin works, but a jumbo tin or 6-oz ramekins hold the egg more comfortably; deep narrow cups make an egg too tall to cook evenly.
- Grease the cupsThe instruction to remove the ring intact is the hinge of the recipe. Brush the bottom of each cup with bacon fat or butter, since the bacon only lines the sides and the white will weld itself to bare metal.
- "Set, but not hard"Whites opaque, yolks still soft, roughly 12 to 15 minutes at 350F depending on the cup. They carry over after they leave the oven, so pull them a shade underdone. For fully firm yolks allow several minutes more.
- Season lateSalt sprinkled on a raw yolk leaves pale flecks where it draws moisture. Salt the white and finish the yolk after baking.
- YieldSix, one per person as a breakfast or brunch course. They cool quickly, so run a knife around the rim and plate them at once.
Baked or "shirred" eggs in individual dishes suited the modern kitchen of the 1920s, a period when thermostatically regulated gas ovens were becoming more common and made it easier to cook several portions at once without standing over a skillet. Muffin-tin egg dishes of this kind turn up in American household publications of the period, offering a way to serve a table of six eggs at the same moment, each one already portioned and garnished. The New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, a Butterick magazine that carried patterns and homemaking features side by side; its egg chapter reflects the same interest in tidy, presentable, individually served food that shaped the era's ideas about the well-run breakfast.