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Tomatoes and Eggs
Grease muffin tins; put one thick slice of unpeeled tomato into each tin; season with salt and pepper; break 1 egg on top of each slice; again season with salt and pepper and put a small piece of butter on top of each egg. Bake in oven until egg is set and cooked through but not hard. Serve on small rounds of toast and garnish with parsley.
A baked-egg dish with no oven temperature and no time given, which is typical of the period. The two things worth getting right are the heat and the moment you pull the pan.
- Oven temperatureSet the oven to 350F. Anything hotter sets the white unevenly and browns the yolk before the tomato has warmed through.
- TimingFigure 12 to 16 minutes in a standard muffin tin. The recipe asks for the egg 'set and cooked through but not hard,' so look for opaque whites and just-set yolks; carryover cooking continues after the pan leaves the oven, so pull them a shade under.
- Cut the tomato thickHalf an inch at least, and take slices from the middle of a firm tomato rather than the ends. A thin or watery slice collapses and floods the cup, and the egg poaches in tomato juice instead of setting.
- Grease properlyButter the tins generously, right up over the rim. Baked egg white grips metal hard; a thin film is not enough, and a nonstick or silicone tin saves trouble.
- Season in two stagesThe recipe salts twice, once on the tomato and again on the egg. Salting the tomato alone leaves the egg flat, and salt sprinkled on a raw yolk can speckle it, so season the white side of the egg rather than the centre.
- Getting them outLet the tins stand a minute or two, then run a small offset spatula or a table knife around each one and lift straight up. Tipping the pan breaks the yolks.
- Yield and servingA standard 12-cup tin gives twelve, enough for six at breakfast or luncheon. Cut the toast rounds slightly wider than the muffin cups so the egg sits on bread rather than over the edge.
This belongs to the large family of shirred and baked egg dishes that filled the breakfast and luncheon pages of American cookbooks from the 1890s through the 1920s, a period often associated with the spread of the gas range and the steadier moderate oven heat it is said to have made available to households. Muffin tins were pressed into service for individual portions of all sorts — baked eggs, timbales, small puddings — because they turned out a neat, uniform serving without the expense of a dozen ramekins. The unpeeled tomato slice is doing structural work as much as anything: the skin holds the round together under the egg. The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company.