No. 2870

Fried Eggs with Brown Butter

Œufs Frits au Beurre Noir

Break four or five eggs into a frying pan containing some hot butter; scald the yolks with the butter, and cook until glossy; season, remove carefully with a large skimmer, and lay them on a dish. Put more butter into the pan, and when slightly brown without burning, strain it over the eggs; put a little vinegar in the frying pan, and pour it over the eggs through a strainer.

← No. 2869 Fried Eggs Turned Over—a la Sole Eggs & Omelets No. 2871 Fried Eggs with Chopped Parsley →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Charles Ranhofer's method for eggs in black butter is short because it assumes a cook who already knows the technique. Two things decide the dish: the butter must brown without scorching, and the yolks stay soft.

Beurre noir is not blackDespite the name, the butter is taken past the nut-brown noisette stage to a dark brown, but stopped short of burning. Once it smells acrid or the milk solids look like coffee grounds, the flavour is bitter and it must be started again.
Use a wide, heavy panFour or five eggs need room to sit in a single layer without crowding, and a heavy pan keeps the butter from jumping from brown to burnt in seconds. Cast iron or a thick steel skillet is closer to the original batterie de cuisine than a thin nonstick pan.
"Scald the yolks with the butter"This means spooning the hot butter over the tops rather than flipping the eggs. The yolk sets to a thin glossy film on the surface and stays liquid underneath, which is what "cook until glossy" describes.
DonenessTwo to three minutes over medium heat is enough. These are soft-yolk eggs by design; if the yolks are firm the point of the dish is lost.
Two separate buttersThe recipe calls for more butter to go into the pan after the eggs are lifted out; it does not say what becomes of the frying butter. The fresh butter is what browns and gets strained over the top. Roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons for five eggs is a workable modern quantity, though the original gives no measure.
The vinegarThe recipe calls only for 'a little vinegar' put into the hot pan and poured over the eggs through a strainer. It will spit and reduce almost at once, and it serves to cut the fat; a tablespoon or so is a reasonable reading of 'a little'.
StrainingRanhofer strains both the butter and the vinegar to keep the browned milk solids off the plate. Some modern cooks leave them in for texture; strain if you want the clean version he intended.
YieldFour or five eggs serve two as a light course, or one as a substantial plate with bread. Serve immediately, since browned butter congeals as it cools.

A Little History

Beurre noir is a long-established sauce in the French repertoire: butter cooked until the milk solids brown, sharpened with vinegar, and often finished with capers or parsley. It is most familiar with skate (raie au beurre noir), and the same treatment was applied to brains, eggs and poached fish across nineteenth-century menus. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as an exhaustive reference rather than a home cookbook, which explains the terseness here and the surrounding cluster of numbered egg variations: fried eggs turned over, fried eggs with chopped parsley, and dozens more, each a single paragraph in a system a professional kitchen could work through quickly. The vinegar points to a period taste for acid against richness that shows up throughout the book.