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Egg Toast
6 slices toast
6 eggs
Salt and pepper
Butter
Moisten the edges of the toast with hot water and spread it with eggs. Poach the butter. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs. Poach the place one on each yolks in salted water until soft cooked, and place one on each Beat the whites slice of toast, being careful not to break it. Beat the whites yolks, season with until very stiff, spread in circles around the yolks, season with salt and pepper, and brown in the oven. Serve hot.
A Victorian-era breakfast dish: a poached yolk on buttered toast, ringed with stiff beaten white and browned. The whole thing lives or dies on handling the bare yolk gently.
- The hinge: poaching a naked yolkSeparate the eggs cleanly and slip each yolk into salted water held at a bare shiver rather than a boil; a rolling boil will tear the yolk apart. The recipe says only "until soft cooked" -- in practice a couple of minutes will usually give a yolk set enough to lift with a slotted spoon while still soft inside.
- Moistening the toastThe recipe does not say why the edges are wetted; the likely purpose is to keep the crust from shattering under the beaten white and drying out in the oven. Butter the toast while it is still warm so it absorbs.
- Beating the whitesSix whites beat up to a considerable volume. A pinch of salt or a few drops of lemon juice helps them hold; season lightly, as salt beaten in early slackens the foam. Use them the moment they are stiff, since they weep if left standing.
- "Brown in the oven"No temperature is given. A hot oven for a few minutes, or a close watch under a broiler, will do it; the aim is colour on the peaks of white, not further cooking of the yolk.
- Assembly orderBuild all six slices on the baking sheet before the whites are beaten, then pipe or spoon the meringue in a ring that walls the yolk in. Leave the yolk itself uncovered so it stays visibly the centre of the dish.
- YieldSix slices, one egg each. It does not hold or reheat well; the browned white softens and slumps as it stands.
Egg dishes of this kind filled the long stretch between plain boiled eggs and the composed savouries of a formal breakfast, and household books of the early twentieth century are full of them because eggs were cheap, always on hand, and stretched a slice of bread into something worth serving. The technique here is borrowed straight from the pastry side of the kitchen: the beaten white is a savoury meringue, browned exactly as a lemon pie would be. Versions ringed with whipped white appear under names such as eggs in a nest and birds' nest eggs, generally traced to the same impulse to make a plain protein look composed on the plate.