Eggs Mornay
Break egg and slip into buttered egg-shirrers, allowing one or two eggs to each shirrer, according to size. Cover with White Sauce II (see p. 266), seasoned with one-third cup grated cheese, paprika, and yolks two eggs; cover with grated cheese and bake until firm.
Fannie Farmer assumes you own egg-shirrers and know her white sauce table by heart. Neither is true anymore, so the conversions matter more than the technique, which is straightforward.
- Egg-shirrersSmall shallow individual baking dishes of earthenware or metal, a few inches across. Ramekins, gratin dishes, or small cast-iron egg pans all work; the point is a wide, shallow vessel so the sauce and cheese brown while the egg is still setting.
- White Sauce IIOne of the sauces in Farmer's numbered white sauce table, a butter-flour-milk sauce of medium thickness; take the proportions from the page she cites. Add the one-third cup of grated cheese, the paprika, and the two egg yolks off the heat.
- The yolks in the sauceThis is the hinge. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of the hot sauce first, then stir the mixture back in with the pan off the burner. Adding cold yolks straight to simmering sauce scrambles them and the coating goes grainy.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; reliable oven thermostats were not yet standard equipment. A moderate oven, around 350F on the middle rack for roughly 12 to 15 minutes, is a workable modern equivalent.
- "Until firm"Farmer means the whites fully set. If you want the yolks still soft, pull the dishes when the whites have just lost their translucency, at about 10 to 12 minutes, and let them finish on the counter for two minutes. Carry-over heat in a hot dish is considerable.
- CheeseA dry aged cheddar or Parmesan is the likeliest reading of Farmer's unspecified 'grated cheese'. Gruyere, Comte, or Emmental give the closer Mornay flavor; use one of them in the sauce and Parmesan on top, since it browns better.
- BrowningIf the top has not colored by the time the eggs are set, a minute under the broiler finishes it. Watch it, as the cheese goes from gold to bitter quickly.
- Yield and servingOne or two eggs per shirrer, according to the size of the dish, as the recipe says; one dish per person. Serve in the baking dishes, with toast, immediately -- the sauce skins over as it cools.
Mornay sauce is a bechamel enriched with cheese and, in the older French treatments, egg yolks; the name is traditionally traced to the Mornay family, though which member is a matter of unresolved guesswork rather than record. Its appearance in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book shows how quickly French sauce vocabulary was absorbed into American middle-class cooking: Farmer builds the whole thing from her own numbered white sauce table, so a cook who had learned White Sauce II for creamed codfish could produce a Mornay without ever reading Careme. Shirred eggs are baked in a shallow buttered dish rather than poached or fried, and Farmer names the vessel rather than the temperature.