Home › Egg Dishes and Omelets › Eggs in Ball Shape
Eggs in Ball Shape
Heat some lard as for fried cakes, and then stir it round and round with a stick until it whirls like a whirlpool; drop the eggs in one at a time; they will be formed into balls by the motion of the lard. Eggs may also be poached in balls by stirring the boiling water in the same way.
Two techniques in three sentences: deep-frying an egg in a vortex of hot fat, and the same trick in water, which survives today as the standard way to poach. The whirlpool is the whole point — it wraps the white around the yolk before it can spread into rags.
- Fat temperature"Heat some lard as for fried cakes" points to doughnut heat, somewhere around 350-370F; the recipe itself gives no figure. Cooler and the egg absorbs fat and flattens; much hotter and the white browns and blisters before the yolk warms.
- Depth mattersYou need enough fat that the egg is fully submerged and can tumble, which means a deep, narrow pan rather than a shallow skillet; a shallow pan cannot hold a whirlpool.
- Break the egg firstCrack each egg into a cup or small ladle and slide it into the centre of the moving vortex. Cracking directly over hot lard risks shell fragments and a fumbled drop.
- One at a timeAs written, and for good reason: a second egg entering the same swirl will fuse to the first, and each addition drops the fat temperature. Let the fat recover between eggs.
- TimingThe original gives none. In fat, a fried egg ball should take roughly 45 seconds to a minute -- set white, soft yolk. The recipe says boiling water for the poached version; dropping to a bare simmer is gentler, and allow about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.
- Use the freshest eggs you canThe technique depends on a thick, cohesive white. Older eggs have watery whites that shred in the current no matter how well you stir. For the water version, a teaspoon of vinegar in the pan helps the white set.
- Stir with a wooden spoonStir with a stick -- The tool is unspecified; any wooden implement will do. Get the liquid genuinely rotating, then withdraw it before the egg goes in -- poking at the egg while it sets is what breaks it.
- Draining and servingLift out with a slotted spoon onto paper or a folded towel, salt at once, and serve immediately; the fried balls turn leathery as they sit. Figure one or two per person, on toast or in clear soup.
Deep-fried eggs of this kind belong to the French rather than the American habit -- French "fried eggs" were traditionally cooked in deep hot fat, as distinct from the American fried egg cooked flat in a little butter. The Butterick Cook Book, issued around 1911 by the pattern company that also published The Delineator, was aimed at a middle-class household cook expected to produce variety from cheap staples, and its chapter on egg dishes and omelets runs to a long list of entries. The whirlpool trick reads as a novelty here, but the second sentence is the one that lasted: swirling the water before dropping the egg is still taught as the way to get a compact poached egg, and it is the same physics -- the rotating liquid folds the loose white back onto itself instead of letting it stream away.