Butter the bottom of a small egg dish (Fig. 567), cover it with a layer of cooked and chopped lean ham and over this pour a little melted meat glaze (No. 402). Break four eggs into the dish, salt the whites, and cook in the range oven, letting them get glossy on top. They may also be prepared with boiled tongue instead of ham.
A shirred-egg dish from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built in a shallow ovenproof dish and served in it. The whole thing lives or dies on pulling it while the yolks are still soft.
The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its egg chapter is essentially a catalogue: the same shallow dish, the same four eggs, and a different garnish beneath them in each numbered entry -- cepes in No. 2922, ham here, tomatoes next. Œufs sur le plat is the French restaurant treatment of eggs, distinct from American pan-fried eggs in that the dish itself goes to the table and the eggs are set by oven heat rather than turned in fat. The spoonful of meat glaze is the tell that this is professional cooking: a kitchen with a stockpot always reducing could afford to finish an egg dish that way, and Ranhofer uses it throughout the book as other cooks use butter.