No. 2854

Eggs au Miroir a la Provencal (œufs au Miroir a la Provencale)

Pick out three or four even-sized tomatoes, cut them through their thickest part in two, suppress the seeds and put them into a pan with some oil; season and cook on both sides until they have reduced their moisture, then take them from the pan and dress on a serving dish capable of being put in the oven; bestrew with chopped parsley mingled with a bit of garlic and a pinch of dry bread-crumbs, pour over some oil and let brown for ten minutes; remove and lay on top of each tomato one miroired egg cut round with a pastry cutter two and a quarter inches in diameter.

← No. 2853 Eggs au Miroir a la Meyerbeer Eggs & Omelets No. 2855 Eggs au Miroir a la Tivolier →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already know how to make œufs au miroir from the preceding entries; this page is really a tomato garnish with a disc of baked egg set on top. The assembly only works if the tomatoes are properly dry before they go under the browning heat.

What "au miroir" meansEggs broken into a buttered shallow dish and cooked gently in the oven until the whites set and the yolks remain soft under a glossy film — the "mirror". Ranhofer gives no temperature or timing here; the whites need to be set firmly enough to stamp cleanly with a cutter.
Cutting the egg roundThe 2¼-inch disc implies the eggs are cooked in a flat shallow dish rather than in individual moulds, then stamped with a plain cutter once the white is set enough not to drag.
Dry the tomatoes hardThis is the hinge. "Until they have reduced their moisture" means cooking the halves cut-side down and then up until they collapse slightly and no liquid weeps out — 10-15 minutes over medium heat. Wet tomatoes will turn the crumb topping to paste and slide the egg off.
Persillade proportionsThe parsley, garlic and crumbs are a Provençal persillade: for each pair of tomato halves, roughly a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a little minced garlic and a pinch of dry crumbs. Ranhofer specifies only a "bit" of garlic and a "pinch" of crumbs, and gives no measure.
"Let brown for ten minutes"This calls for a hot oven or a salamander, hot enough to colour the crumbs in the time given. Ranhofer states no temperature.
Oil, not butterRanhofer calls simply for oil rather than butter, which fits the Provençal tag, though he does not specify olive oil.
YieldThree or four tomatoes give six to eight halves, and Ranhofer sets one egg disc on each. He gives no number of portions.

A Little History

Au miroir is one of the older French names for what English cooks call shirred or baked eggs, the name generally traced to the shine that oven heat and basting fat give the surface of the yolk; Ranhofer devotes a long run of numbered recipes to the form, each distinguished only by its garnish, which is exactly how a nineteenth-century professional kitchen was organised — one technique, dozens of dressings, all filed for quick reference by the man calling orders. The à la Provençale tag in this period usually signals tomato, garlic and olive oil, the three things Parisian kitchens associated with the Midi, and the parsley-garlic-crumb mixture strewn over the tomatoes is a straightforward persillade of the sort still used on Provençal baked vegetables. Ranhofer had cooked in France before taking over the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) was his attempt to set down the whole repertoire in one volume; recipes like this one, which lean on a cross-reference rather than repeating themselves, show that the book was written for cooks who would read it as a system rather than page by page.