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Eggs, Cleveland
Carefully skin three fresh lamb kidneys, then cut into thin slices. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a small frying pan, add the kidneys; season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper; toss well while cooking for five minutes. Pour in one tablespoon good sherry, two tablespoons tomato sauce, two tablespoons demiglace, adding six sliced canned mushrooms and half teaspoon finely chopped parsley; stir well with a wooden spoon while cooking for two minutes. Lightly butter six individual shirred-egg dishes; carefully break two fresh eggs into each dish. Place in a hot oven for five minutes. Remove them from the oven; divide the kidneys evenly over the eggs and serve.
A hotel breakfast dish of shirred eggs under a sherried kidney ragout. The work is in the sauce base; the eggs themselves take five minutes.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon — assertive but correct for kidneys. The half teaspoon of salt is for three kidneys, not for the finished dish.
- Demi-glaceTwo tablespoons of reduced brown sauce is what binds and glosses the kidneys. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; failing that, reduce a cup of strong brown stock to a syrupy spoonful or two. Do not substitute plain stock, which will thin the mixture and leave it watery on top of the eggs.
- A hot ovenPeriod usage puts this somewhere around 400-450F. Five minutes at that heat is a short bake for two eggs in a shallow buttered dish; the yolks are meant to stay loose, and the whites may need a little longer to set. Preheat the dishes along with the oven if you want the whites to catch evenly.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall, shallow, ovenproof, roughly 4-5 inches across — the modern equivalents are gratin dishes or wide ramekins. A deep ramekin will overcook the whites before the top sets.
- Preparing the kidneysSkin them, then halve and cut out the white core and fat at the center; the recipe assumes you know to do this. Slicing thin and cooking hot and fast is the point — five minutes is near the limit, and kidney turns grainy and metallic if it goes past.
- Order of workThe kidney mixture must be finished and hot before the eggs go into the oven. It waits better than the eggs do.
- Canned mushroomsCommon in hotel kitchens of the period, and what the recipe calls for. Fresh mushrooms are better but need to be sauteed separately until their water has gone, then added with the sauce.
- YieldSix dishes, two eggs each — six servings as a breakfast or luncheon course. The kidney ragout stretches thinly across six portions, which is the intent: a garnish, not a stew.
Filippini's International Cook Book is largely a record of the named dishes of turn-of-the-century American hotel and club cookery, where a cook was expected to produce dozens of variations on shirred eggs, each distinguished by its garnish and each labeled after a person, a city or a patron. The book offers no explanation of this name. What the recipe does document is the working method of a professional kitchen: it assumes demi-glace and tomato sauce already stand ready on the stove, so the whole dish comes together in a matter of minutes. Lamb kidneys were cheap, plentiful and unremarkable on American breakfast menus then, which is the real distance between this page and a modern one.