Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Shirred Eggs
Shirred Eggs
Butter the inside of a deep plate, and break into it as many eggs as will cover the bottom, shake a little pepper and salt over them, and place small pieces of butter on top; put in a moderate oven for five minutes, when they will be done.
A one-paragraph recipe that assumes a great deal of the cook: the vessel, the oven and the doneness are all left to judgment. Two points decide the outcome — the dish you bake in and how long you actually leave it.
- "Moderate oven"Read this as around 350F; 325-350F is the range in which whites set without the butter browning.
- Five minutes is optimisticAt 350F in a cold dish, expect 8-12 minutes for set whites and still-liquid yolks. Five minutes would only work if the plate went into the oven already hot, which the recipe does not specify. Pull them when the whites are just opaque; carryover heat in a heavy dish keeps cooking them.
- "A deep plate"Best read as an ovenproof earthenware or metal egg dish (French plat à œufs), a small gratin dish or a small cast-iron pan. Check that whatever you use is oven-safe; some china and stoneware is not, and can crack.
- Butter, twiceThe butter inside the dish keeps the whites from welding to it; the pieces on top baste the yolks and stop them filming over and turning grey. Do not skip the second lot. Use about a teaspoon per egg.
- Crowding is the point"As many eggs as will cover the bottom" means the whites should touch and support each other in a single layer. Eggs spread thin in a large dish overcook at the edges before the yolks warm through.
- Season after, not beforeSalt shaken directly onto raw yolks pits and speckles them. Salt the whites, or season once the eggs come out — a modern refinement Oscar's line does not make.
- Yield and serviceTwo eggs per person, sent to the table in the dish they cooked in. Buttered toast fingers are the usual accompaniment; the eggs continue to firm up as they sit, so serve them at once.
- Doneness and raw yolkThe yolks in a properly shirred egg remain liquid. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized shell eggs or cook until the yolks are firm.
Shirring is the English name for what French kitchens call œufs sur le plat -- eggs baked and served in the same small flat dish. The origin of the English word is uncertain; it is often connected to the dish itself, but that derivation is traditional rather than established. That is why the recipe reads so bare here: Oscar Tschirky's book records the working shorthand of the Waldorf's kitchens, where a cook already knew the pan, the oven and the moment to pull it, and needed only the proportions confirmed. Shirred eggs belonged to the age of the American hotel breakfast, when a hot dish that could be assembled in seconds, finished in the oven, and carried to the table in its own vessel was worth more than any elaboration.