No. 2915

Eggs on a Dish, Fermiere

Œufs sur le Plat a la Fermiere

Cut the gall from one chicken liver, mince the latter and put it into a pan with butter and a spoonful of chopped onions; season and cook, but not too quickly, while turning over; remove the liver with a skimmer and put one spoonful of chopped-up mushrooms into the pan; let the moisture reduce. Place this in the bottom of an egg dish, on this the liver, break two eggs over, season, pour over some melted butter and cook in the oven.

← No. 2914 Eggs on a Dish, English Style Eggs & Omelets No. 2916 Eggs on a Dish, Monaco →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade and assumes a shallow ovenproof egg dish, a hot range and a cook who knows when a liver is done. The whole thing is about five minutes of work and serves one.

The gall bladderModern supermarket chicken livers usually arrive already trimmed, but check anyway for the small greenish sac and any green-stained tissue and cut it away generously. Bile is intensely bitter and will ruin the dish.
"Not too quickly"This is the hinge. Liver sautéed hard over high heat turns grainy and dry; keep the butter at a gentle foam and turn the pieces until they are firm outside and still faintly pink within, roughly two to three minutes for a minced liver.
The egg dishAn œuf sur le plat dish is a shallow round ovenproof dish, sized so two eggs cover the base in one layer. A small ceramic gratin dish or a 6-inch skillet will stand in.
Reducing the mushrooms"Let the moisture reduce" means cooking the chopped mushrooms until the pan is dry and they begin to fry rather than steam. Wet mushrooms under the eggs will weep and thin the whites.
Oven heatRanhofer gives none. Bake at around 375F, which should set the whites in roughly 6 to 8 minutes while leaving the yolks liquid. A hotter oven risks browning the whites before the centre sets.
Seasoning the eggsSalt sprinkled directly on a yolk leaves white speckles as it draws moisture out. Season the whites and the melted butter and leave the yolks bare.
Butter quantityQuantities -- Ranhofer's unqualified "spoonful" is not defined; read it as roughly a tablespoon. So about a tablespoon of chopped onion and the same of mushrooms. The butter, both for the pan and poured over before baking, is left unmeasured; a teaspoon or two over the eggs is enough.
YieldTwo eggs, one liver: a single serving, and presumably served in the dish it was cooked in.

A Little History

À la fermière means "farmwife's style," a French menu term that generally signals rustic ingredients treated simply — here a single chicken liver and a spoonful of mushrooms, the sort of thing a household with poultry would have on hand rather than anything bought. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a comprehensive record of the restaurant's kitchen, and he includes dozens of numbered variations on œufs sur le plat in sequence, each distinguished only by what goes under or over the eggs: English style, Monaco and so on. The format tells you something about how such books were organized — by the garnish that justified the name on the menu card rather than by technique.