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Fried Eggs with Black Butter
Put one ounce of butter in a fryingpan; place on the hot stove and allow to become hot without browning; break twelve eggs into cups and slide them carefully into the pan, season with salt and white pepper and cook slowly for three minutes. Have ready a hot flat dish, slide the eggs gently onto it without turning the over, taking care not to break them, and set the dish in a warm place. Put two ounces of butter in the saucepan, place it on the hot stove again and let the butter get a good lemon color, which will take about three minutes; add two teaspoonfuls of vinegar, pour this over the eggs, and serve at once.
This is oeufs au beurre noir under an English name, and the whole dish turns on the second batch of butter. Everything else is a matter of pan management.
- The hinge: watch the butter, not the clock"A good lemon color" is the target the recipe gives, and the three minutes is only a rough guide; on a modern burner two ounces of butter may well get there faster. Pull it once the foam subsides and it has taken good color, because truly black butter is burnt and bitter.
- The vinegar goes in off the heatTwo teaspoons of vinegar hitting hot butter will spit violently. Slide the pan off the burner, add the vinegar, swirl, and pour. A sharp vinegar suits the dish; some kitchens finish with capers.
- One ounce of butter for twelve eggsThat is two tablespoons, which is thin coverage for a dozen eggs. Assume a large, well-seasoned or nonstick pan, or cook in two batches; a modern cook will want closer to double for a single pan.
- Pan size and batchingTwelve eggs in one layer needs something like a 14-inch skillet. Two batches of six in a 10-inch pan, held on the warm serving dish, gives a better result than crowding.
- "Cook slowly for three minutes"This yields set whites and a fully liquid yolk, which is the point of the dish. If you want the yolks firmer, cover the pan for the last minute rather than raising the heat, which would brown the underside and toughen the whites.
- Runny yolksThe eggs are deliberately underdone by modern food-safety standards. For anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, use pasteurized shell eggs.
- White pepperSpecified so no black flecks show on the whites; the choice is largely a visual one, though white pepper does not taste identical to black. Black pepper does no harm if that is what you have.
- YieldTwelve eggs served two apiece is six portions as a lunch or supper dish, or a dozen single-egg servings at a large breakfast.
- A typo in the original"Without turning the over" is a printer's slip for "without turning them over." The eggs are never flipped.
Beurre noir is a sauce of the French repertoire: butter cooked past golden, sharpened with vinegar, and poured over something bland and soft. It is the classic partner to skate, to brains, and to eggs, and the sour note is what keeps the browned butter from cloying. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, put his name to this book in 1896 at a moment when American hotel dining was thoroughly French in its vocabulary; a great many entries in it are standard French preparations set down in plain English for a domestic reader. The name is a mild lie in every language: properly made, the butter is deep hazelnut brown, and anything actually black is generally held to have been ruined.