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Eggs and Cheese
Cover well with grated cheese a buttered flat dish and let the cheese soften in the oven. Break three or four eggs over it and return to the oven till the whites are set; now put on more grated cheese, then a sprinkling of pepper, then one of bread crumbs; brown and serve very hot.
A shirred-egg dish with no quantities beyond "three or four eggs" and no oven temperature, which is typical of the period. The whole thing hinges on not overshooting the yolks.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature at all; a moderate oven (around 350F) is a reasonable modern reading. The final browning step wants more heat than that, so finish under a broiler for a minute rather than raising the oven and drying the eggs out.
- "Flat dish"This means a shallow ovenproof gratin dish or individual egg dishes, not a deep casserole. Depth is the enemy here: the eggs need to sit in a thin layer so the whites set before the yolks harden.
- TimingEggs baked in a 350F oven need roughly 10 to 12 minutes for set whites and still-liquid yolks. Pull them a shade before they look done; the residual heat of the dish keeps cooking them at the table.
- The cheeseAn unspecified "grated cheese" in a book of this period and place would most likely have been a firm aged cheddar or a dry American cheese, though the recipe does not say. Any good melting cheese works, but avoid anything very wet, which will loosen and pool around the eggs.
- CrumbsUse dry bread crumbs, not fresh, and consider tossing them with a little melted butter so they brown rather than scorch in patches under the broiler.
- SaltThe original calls for pepper only, with no salt; the cheese supplies some. Taste your cheese first and season accordingly.
- YieldAs written this serves one generously or two lightly. Scale by using individual dishes with two eggs apiece rather than crowding one large dish, which makes even setting difficult.
Baked or "shirred" eggs are close kin to the French oeufs sur le plat, in which eggs are cooked and served in the same shallow dish, and dishes of this kind are common in English-language cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a way of stretching two or three eggs. The Butterick Cook Book belongs to a run of domestic manuals issued by the Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator. The cheese-and-crumb finish reflects a period habit of browning a dish's surface for texture and appearance, a domestic echo of the restaurant gratin.