Home › The World's Kitchen › Eggs Au Miroir
Eggs Au Miroir
Lightly butter six small shirred egg dishes. Carefully break two very fresh eggs into each dish without disturbing the yolks. Season them with a light saltspoon salt and a very little white pepper, well sprinkled over the eggs of each dish. Place them in a moderate oven for five minutes. Remove and serve very hot.
Shirred eggs baked in individual dishes, which the French call au miroir because the unbroken yolk should stay glossy as a mirror. The whole point is timing: the whites set, the yolks do not.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F (175C). Anything hotter browns the whites at the edges and clouds the yolk before the centre sets.
- Five minutes is optimisticIn a modern oven with cold eggs and cold dishes, two eggs per dish need roughly 8 to 12 minutes at 350F for whites that are just set. Start checking at 8 and pull them when the whites are opaque but still trembling; the hot dish keeps cooking them on the way to the table.
- Shirred egg dishesSmall shallow ceramic or glass dishes, about 4 inches across, holding a cup or less. Ramekins, cocottes, or individual gratin dishes all work; deeper dishes trap steam and dull the yolk.
- A saltspoonAbout a quarter teaspoon, and that is generous for two eggs. Salt the whites rather than the yolks, since salt directly on the yolk leaves pale speckles.
- Very fresh eggs, and whyThe instruction is not decorative. A fresh egg has a thick, tight white that holds the yolk high and domed; an older egg spreads thin and the yolk sits flat and breaks easily as you pour it in. Break each egg into a cup first, then slide it into the buttered dish.
- Preheat the dishesButter the dishes and set them in the oven for two or three minutes before adding the eggs. The whites begin to set from below immediately, which keeps the yolk sitting proud instead of sinking.
- YieldSix dishes of two eggs each: six servings, and a substantial breakfast portion for each. Serve in the dishes, on plates or folded napkins, with toast.
- Doneness and soft yolksBaked this way the yolk stays liquid, which is the intent. If serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized shell eggs or choose a different dish.
Au miroir is one of the French terms for eggs baked in a dish, and the name refers to the appearance of the finished egg: the yolk should be untouched, faintly filmed over, and shiny enough to catch the light. English-speaking cookbooks of the early twentieth century often translated the technique as "shirred eggs," a term whose origin is obscure but which by 1900 meant simply eggs baked in a small buttered dish. The recipe's place in a book surveying international cookery is telling: at the time, the professional vocabulary of the hotel kitchen was overwhelmingly French, and a chapter surveying the world's cooking would inevitably lean on it. So is the assumption that a household owns six matching shirred egg dishes, which says a good deal about the kind of breakfast table the book had in mind.