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Baked Eggs, with Tomato Sauce
This is a most attractive luncheon dish. Make a tomato sauce, No. 1 (See Chapter on Sauces for Fish, Meats, Poultry and Game), adding, however, three tablespoons of flour to make the purée thicker. Have ready some small fire-proof dishes and place in each a liberal spoonful of the thickened tomato, and upon it lay a neatly trimmed poached egg. Cover rather thickly with grated Parmesan cheese, and put in the oven for two or three minutes to brown the cheese. The oven must be very hot, as the cheese should be nicely colored while the eggs are still quite soft and creamy.
A gratin of poached eggs on thick tomato purée, finished under fierce heat. Everything depends on the eggs staying soft while the cheese colors.
- "Very hot" ovenThe book gives no number. Set the oven as high as it will go, or use the broiler with the dishes close to the element; at a moderate heat the cheese will not color before the yolks set hard, which defeats the point of the dish.
- Two or three minutes means itWatch it. The eggs are already cooked; the oven is only browning cheese. Pull the dishes the moment the surface is freckled.
- Poach the eggs shortSince they get a second heating, poach only until the whites are just set, about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes, and drain them well on a towel so no water thins the sauce.
- "Fire-proof dishes"Individual ramekins, small gratin dishes or shallow cocottes, sized to hold a spoonful of sauce and one egg. Make sure whatever you use will take the fierce heat you are giving it.
- Tomato Sauce No. 1, thickenedThe cross-reference is to the book's basic tomato sauce; three tablespoons of flour added to it gives a purée stiff enough to hold a poached egg without spreading. Any thick, well-reduced tomato sauce that mounds on a spoon will serve; a thin marinara will not.
- ParmesanBetter grated fresh from a wedge. Pre-grated cheese often carries an anti-caking agent, which can keep it from melting cleanly into a glaze.
- Yield and servingOne egg per dish, one or two dishes per person; a dozen eggs will feed six to twelve depending on appetite. Serve immediately, with toast, since the yolks continue to firm in the hot dish.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) was published by the dress-pattern company as part of its broad program of household instruction for middle-class American women. A poached egg set on tomato purée, blanketed with grated cheese and glazed is essentially the standard gratin treatment applied to eggs, cousin to the various oeufs dishes named for the sauce beneath them. The recipe calls for Parmesan without comment, and directs that it be made in "small fire-proof dishes."