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Eggs a La Suisse
6 eggs
1 cup cream
2 tablespoons butter
Salt
½ to 1 cup grated cheese
Cayenne
Spread the bottom of a baking-dish with butter. Sprinkle a layer of grated cheese over it and break the eggs on the cheese, being careful not to break the yolks. Pour a little cream over the eggs, then more grated cheese. Season with salt and cayenne, and bake in a moderate oven (350° F.) until the eggs are set, but not hard. Serve in the baking-dish.
A baked egg gratin that lives or dies on timing: the whites must set while the yolks stay liquid, and the window is a few minutes wide. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: pull it earlyTake the dish out when the whites are just opaque and still wobble slightly in the centre. Residual heat in the cream and the hot dish keeps cooking the eggs for another minute or two on the table, which is exactly the margin between soft yolks and chalky ones.
- Oven temperatureThe book already gives 350°F for its "moderate oven," which is right. At that heat a shallow dish of six eggs runs roughly 12 to 18 minutes, depending on how cold the eggs and cream were going in.
- The cheese"À la Suisse" points at a Swiss cheese such as Gruyère or Emmental, though the book itself says only "grated cheese." Grate it fine so the bottom layer melts before the whites set; a coarse grate leaves rubbery shreds under the eggs.
- How much cream actually gets usedThe ingredient list says a cup, the method says "a little." A cup is generous for six eggs unless the dish is wide; about half of it, spooned over the yolks, gives a sauce rather than a pool that dilutes the whites and stretches the cooking time.
- Choose the right dishA wide, shallow gratin or a 9-inch pie plate, buttered heavily, so the eggs sit in one layer. Deep dishes crowd the eggs and the ones in the middle are still raw when the edges have gone hard.
- Break the eggs into a cup firstCrack each egg into a small cup and slide it onto the cheese. Cracking directly over the dish is how the yolks break, and the recipe depends on them staying whole.
- CayenneA pinch, not a shake — enough to sharpen the cream. Salt the whites rather than the yolks; salt sitting on a yolk can leave pale speckles.
- YieldSix eggs serves three at breakfast or two as a light supper with bread. It does not reheat; serve straight from the baking-dish, as instructed.
Oeufs sur le plat — eggs baked and served in the same shallow dish — were a standard of French household cooking, and the tag "à la Suisse" simply signals the Swiss cheese and cream that turn the plain version into a gratin. American cookbooks of the early twentieth century absorbed a good many of these small French egg dishes, often presenting one with the French name intact but the method stripped to a few lines. The egg chapters of such books were long and inventive for a practical reason: eggs were cheap, kept reasonably well, and could carry a Sunday breakfast or a meatless supper without much expense. Serving in the baking-dish, noted here almost in passing, was part of the appeal — one vessel from oven to table, and the eggs arrive hot.