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Fried Eggs
Put into a fryingpan three tablespoonfuls of sweet oil; place on the hot range, heat it well, and break into it one egg, being careful not to injure the yolk. Fold the white over the yolk with the aid of a knife, and cook for a quarter of a minute; turn the egg over with a skimmer, and cook for a quarter of a minute on the other side; lift it out with the skimmer, and place it on a hot dish. Proceed in the same way with eleven more eggs, and they will then be ready to serve. Mix one pinch of salt with half a pinch of white pepper, and season each of the eggs with it after they are placed on the dish. Care must be taken to cook the eggs separately, and not more than a quarter of a minute on each side.
This is the French method — eggs deep-ish fried in hot oil rather than set gently in butter — and the whole point is speed. Read the timing as literal.
- Sweet oil"Sweet oil" generally means olive oil; "sweet" indicates it is fresh rather than rancid. A mild olive oil, or any oil with a smoke point comfortably above shallow-frying heat, works; three tablespoons in a small pan gives the depth the method needs.
- Quarter of a minute means 15 secondsThat is not shorthand for "briefly" — it is the recipe's hinge. The oil must be hot enough that the white sets on contact, so the egg is out of the pan before the yolk begins to thicken. If the white is still slack at 15 seconds the oil was not hot enough.
- How hot the oil should beThe recipe gives no temperature. Heat until the surface just shimmers; in modern terms this kind of shallow frying sits around 350-375F. Cooler than that and the white spreads and poaches instead of puffing, and the fold will not hold.
- Folding the whiteTilt the pan so the oil pools, then use the knife to lap the white back over the yolk as it sets. This encases the yolk, which is what allows the egg to be turned at all without breaking.
- SkimmerA flat perforated skimmer or a spider — not a slotted spoon. You want to slide under the egg and lift it flat, draining oil as you go.
- Yolks stay liquidFifteen seconds a side leaves the yolk essentially raw. That is the intended result, but anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised should use pasteurized eggs or a different cooking method.
- Pinch, and seasoning lastA pinch is conventionally reckoned at about 1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon; the book does not define it. Either way, "one pinch of salt with half a pinch of white pepper" is a modest seasoning for twelve eggs, so scale to taste. The recipe seasons the eggs on the hot dish, after they are lifted from the pan.
- Yield and pacingThe recipe gives no yield; twelve eggs suggests a table rather than a single plate. Cooked one at a time at half a minute each, the dozen takes at least six minutes, so the dish must be genuinely hot and the eggs served at once -- they collapse and turn greasy as they cool.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and the recipe follows classic French professional practice: this is the oeuf frit han the the American short-order fried egg, which was cooked in butter or bacon fat and left flat. The difference is instructive: the French version treats the egg almost as a fritter, dropping it into hot oil so the white puffs and browns at the edges and wraps the yolk into a neat parcel, while the griddle version aims for an even, pale round. Repeating the instruction twice — cook them separately, not more than a quarter of a minute a side — suggests, though one can only infer it, that Oscar knew exactly which mistake cooks make, then as now.