No. 2869

Fried Eggs Turned Over—a la Sole

Œufs Frits des Deux Cotes--a la Sole

Break two eggs on a plate and season: pour some clarified butter in a small pan, and when it reaches hazel-nut (No. 567), slip in the eggs carefully, and pour more butter over. When they are cooked underneath, turn them over, and a minute after slide them on a dish with the butter; baste over with a coffeespoonful of good vinegar heated in a pan.

← No. 2868 Fried Eggs, Neapolitan Style, Turned Over Eggs & Omelets No. 2870 Fried Eggs with Brown Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two eggs, clarified butter taken to the nut-brown stage, and a splash of hot vinegar — the whole thing takes about three minutes, so read it through before the pan goes on.

"Hazel-nut" butterThe cross-reference (No. 567) appears to be to beurre noisette: butter cooked until the milk solids brown and it smells of hazelnuts. Because Ranhofer specifies clarified butter, most of the solids have already been removed, so watch the colour rather than waiting for foam to subside; it can go from pale gold to burnt very quickly.
Clarified butter, and whyWhole butter would scorch and speckle at the heat needed to set the underside quickly. Clarified butter (or ghee) tolerates considerably higher heat than whole butter. A small pan keeps the two eggs together and keeps the butter deep enough to baste.
CoffeespoonfulIn French kitchen usage a cuillerée à café is the teaspoon, about 5 ml. Use a sharp wine vinegar and warm it in the emptied pan for a few seconds — it should hiss and reduce slightly, not boil away.
"Des deux côtés" and the timingThese are eggs cooked on both sides, not sunny side up. Ranhofer's "a minute after" is generous by current taste; thirty to forty seconds on the second side will leave the yolk still liquid, if that is what you want. Longer and the yolk sets and the vinegar has less to cut.
BastingSpooning hot butter over the top before the turn sets the white on the surface and makes the flip far less likely to break a yolk. A flexible fish slice, not tongs.
Why "a la sole"The name most likely points to the way sole is treated: browned in butter on both sides, plated, then finished with the pan butter and an acid (though there is no flouring here). Lemon is the usual acid for the fish; here vinegar does the job.
SeasoningHe seasons the eggs on the plate before they go in the pan rather than after. Season lightly — the browned butter and vinegar carry a lot of flavour.
YieldOne serving. Cook in single portions; four eggs in one pan will steam rather than brown and cannot be turned cleanly.

A Little History

This is entry No. 2869 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled over the course of a long career as chef at Delmonico's in New York, which by then spanned two stints with a break in the later 1870s and was still ongoing when the book appeared. The egg chapters run to what looks like hundreds of numbered variations, most of them a few lines long, because the book was built as a working reference for professional kitchens rather than a book to read through: a cook needed to know the difference between fried eggs Neapolitan style, fried eggs turned over, and fried eggs with brown butter, and Ranhofer set them out consecutively so the difference was visible at a glance. The beurre noisette-and-vinegar finish here is straight French bourgeois cooking, the same treatment given to skate and brains, imported wholesale into an American luxury restaurant along with the numbering, the French titles and the cross-references to base preparations elsewhere in the volume.