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Shirred Eggs
Butter four or five shirring-dishes. To half a cup of grated bread crumbs and half a cup of chopped chicken or ham add enough cream to mix to a smooth, moist consistency, like butter.
Season to taste with salt and pepper. Put a tablespoonful of the mixture into each dish, break in an egg, season with a dash of salt and pepper, cover with more of the mixture, and cook in the same manner as eggs à la Parisienne. Serve in the cups.
A chafing-dish or oven dish of eggs baked under a savory crumb paste, written for a reader who has already read the preceding recipe. A few gaps need filling.
- Shirring-dishesSmall individual heatproof dishes — modern ramekins or cocottes of about 4 to 6 ounces are exactly right. Butter them generously; the crumb mixture sticks.
- The missing cross-reference"Cook in the same manner as eggs a la Parisienne" points back to a preceding recipe not reproduced here; dishes of that name are generally cooked gently in a covered dish set in hot water until the whites are firm and the yolks still soft. In a chafing dish that is the hot-water pan with the lid on. No oven temperature is given here; if you use an oven, a moderate heat for roughly 12 to 15 minutes will approximate it.
- Judging doneness under a lidBecause the egg is covered with the crumb mixture you cannot see it. Press the center lightly with a fingertip: firm at the edges with a little give in the middle. An extra two minutes is the difference between a soft yolk and a chalky one.
- Grated bread crumbsDry crumbs grated from a stale loaf, finer and thirstier than commercial crumbs and nothing like panko. If you use packaged dry crumbs, add the cream slowly — you will need less.
- CreamUse heavy cream. The mixture should be spreadable like softened butter, not pourable, or it will slump off the egg.
- The chicken or hamBoth are meant to be already cooked — leftovers from a roast or a boiled ham. Ham brings its own salt, so season the mixture at the end and taste before adding any.
- YieldFour or five dishes, one egg each: a light supper or breakfast for four, or a first course for five.
Shirred eggs are generally said to take their name from the shallow dish they are baked in — the shirrer or shirring-dish — though the word's origin is not securely established, and the method closely resembles the French œufs sur le plat, eggs cooked and served in the same vessel. Their appearance here places the recipe in the neighborhood of the American chafing-dish vogue of the 1890s and 1900s, when a spirit lamp and a copper pan on the sideboard let hostesses cook in front of guests without a servant or a kitchen. Recipes of that moment lean heavily on cooked meat trimmings and bread crumbs, since the chafing dish handled leftovers gracefully and quickly; a cup of yesterday's chicken, bound with cream and crumbs, turned five eggs into a course worth serving at the table.