Eggs Susette
Wash and bake six large potatoes, cut slice from top of each, scoop out inside, and mash. To three cups mashed potato add six tablespoons finely chopped ham, two tablespoons finely chopped parsley, whites of two eggs well beaten, three tablespoons butter, four tablespoons cream, and salt and pepper. Line potato shells with mixture, place in each cavity a poached egg, cover with potato mixture, and bake until browned. Care must be taken to have eggs delicately parched.
Baked or Shirred Eggs Butter an egg-shirrer. Cover bottom and sides with fine cracker crumbs. Break an egg into a cup, and carefully slip into shirrer. Cover with seasoned buttered crumbs, and bake in moderate oven until white is firm and crumbs brown. The shirrers should be placed on a tin plate, that they may be easily removed from the oven.
Eggs may be baked in small tomatoes. Cut a slice from stem end of tomato, scoop out the pulp, slip in an egg, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake.
A stuffed baked potato with a poached egg hidden inside it. The whole dish hinges on the egg being underdone when it goes in, since it keeps cooking under the potato.
- Poach soft, deliberatelyPoach the eggs about two minutes, until the white is just set and the yolk still fully liquid, then lift them onto a towel to drain. They will firm further during the browning stage, and an egg poached to firmness first will be chalky by the time the potato colors.
- Oven temperaturesThe original gives no temperature. In a modern oven, bake the potatoes at around 400F for about an hour, until a skewer slides through easily. For the final browning, 10 to 15 minutes at the same heat is enough; longer is working against the eggs.
- Scoop with a marginLeave a shell about a quarter inch thick or it will collapse when filled. Six large baking potatoes yield roughly the three cups of mash the recipe calls for, but weigh in more potato than you think you need.
- The hamSix tablespoons of finely chopped ham means cooked ham, plausibly the trimmings from a boiled or baked joint. Deli ham works; a salty country ham means holding back on the added salt.
- Egg whitesThe two beaten whites lighten the mash and help it hold shape. Beat them to soft peaks and fold in last, after the mixture has cooled slightly, or they deflate on contact with hot potato.
- Cream and butterThree tablespoons butter and four tablespoons cream to three cups of mash gives a stiff piping consistency, not a fluffy mash. If it slumps it will not dome over the egg.
- AssemblingLine the shells, seat the egg, then pipe or spoon the remaining mixture over the top and smooth it. A pastry bag makes a neater cover than a spoon and puts less weight on the egg.
- YieldSix potatoes, six eggs, six servings as a light supper or lunch dish. They do not hold well and should go from oven to table.
Fannie Farmer's egg chapter is largely a catalogue of ways to dress up an egg for a chafing dish, luncheon table or invalid tray, and Eggs Susette belongs to the showier end of it: an egg concealed inside something else, so that the first cut is a small surprise. The name probably follows a common cookbook convention of the 1890s and 1900s, in which a dish was tagged with a French or French-sounding woman's name for elegance rather than in memory of any particular Susette, though this is a guess rather than a documented origin. The technique is a close relative of the pommes duchesse family, where mashed potato enriched with butter, cream and egg is piped and browned, and of the numerous "eggs baked in a case" recipes then popular, tomatoes, ramekins, bread croustades and potato shells all serving the same purpose. It is also a thrift dish in respectable disguise, since the potato skins, ordinarily discarded, become the serving vessel.