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Fried Eggs with Bacon
Break a dozen eggs separately in cups being careful not to damage the yolks Put into a fryingpan some slices of fat bacon, fry them, take them out, boil the fat, put in the eggs one at a time so they will be able to be taken apart and fry them well but not to be too much done. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over and place on some slices of bacon on a dish; or if preferred, they may be put in the center of a dish and the slices of bacon put around as a garnish. Should there not be enough fat in the pan, add more. Although this is a very ordinary dish, much care should be taken in preparing.
A restaurant cook's version of the plainest dish in the book, written for a dozen eggs at once. The instructions are all about fat temperature and keeping the eggs separate in the pan.
- The hinge: fat temperature"Boil the fat" is unlikely to mean a literal rolling boil, since rendered fat at a true boil is far above frying range. Read it as bringing the fat to the point where it shimmers and a drop of egg white sets on contact. Too cool and the whites spread and turn slack; too hot and the edges brown and blister before the yolk warms.
- "Fat bacon"Probably fatty streaky bacon or salt pork, which is likely to throw off more grease than much modern cured bacon. You may need to add butter or a neutral fat to get the depth the recipe assumes — the instruction to "add more" if short is not an afterthought.
- Breaking into cupsThis is the point of the whole method. Eggs broken separately into cups can be slid in one at a time, spaced apart, so each sets as a distinct egg rather than a raft. It also lets you spot a bad one before it reaches the pan.
- "Fry them well but not to be too much done"Whites fully opaque and set, yolks still soft. Two to three minutes in hot fat, spooning fat over the tops rather than flipping, which keeps the yolks whole as the recipe intends.
- Do a dozen in batchesTwelve eggs will not fry cleanly in one domestic pan. Four to six at a time in a 10- to 12-inch skillet, held on a warm dish, is closer to what a hotel range achieved with a much larger surface.
- Season after, not beforeSalt sprinkled on raw white draws out moisture and speckles the surface. Oscar seasons the finished eggs, and the bacon already carries a good deal of salt.
- YieldA dozen eggs with bacon serves six as written — two eggs each — with the bacon either laid under the eggs or ringed around the platter as a garnish.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in the 1890s, filled his cook book with the hotel's grand service dishes but also with items like this one, because a hotel breakfast trade ran on simple dishes. The closing line — "although this is a very ordinary dish, much care should be taken in preparing" — reflects the professional view that the simplest orders are where a cook's reputation is actually made. The technique of breaking eggs individually into cups belongs to that same professional world: in a commercial kitchen a single spoiled egg dropped straight into the pan cost you the whole batch.