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Eggs Cocotte, Bradshaw
Heat a tablespoon butter in a saucepan, add half a finely chopped onion, half a chopped green pepper, and gently brown for five minutes, occasionally stirring; then add two finely crushed, peeled tomatoes, a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, one gill broth, two saltspoons salt and three saltspoons sugar. Mix well and let gently cook for fifteen minutes. Divide the sauce evenly into six egg-cocotte dishes, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish and season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, evenly divided over them. Pour a teaspoon thick cream over each dish, place them on a tin, set in the oven for five minutes, remove and serve.
A tomato-pepper sauce under baked eggs, in the French œufs en cocotte style. The measurements are in 1900s tableware units and the oven instruction is the weak point.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so two saltspoons salt is 1/2 teaspoon and three saltspoons sugar is 3/4 teaspoon. One gill is 1/2 cup of broth.
- Cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided porcelain ramekins of about 4 to 6 oz each; six of them, two eggs apiece. Any ovenproof ramekin of that size works, and 6-oz ones give the eggs room.
- No temperature is givenA moderate oven, 350-375F, is a reasonable assumption.
- Five minutes is not enoughTwo eggs in a ramekin over warm sauce need roughly 10 to 14 minutes at 350F for set whites and liquid yolks. Pull them when the whites are just opaque and barely jiggling; carryover heat finishes them at the table.
- Use a water bathStanding the ramekins in a roasting pan with hot water halfway up the sides is standard practice for eggs en cocotte and keeps the whites tender rather than rubbery. The original's bare tin heats the bases too fast.
- Cool the sauce slightlyDivide the sauce and let it stop steaming before cracking the eggs in, or the whites begin to set unevenly around the edges.
- TomatoesTwo crushed peeled tomatoes means fresh, peeled by scalding, and the sauce should be thick enough to hold the eggs up. Out of season, use about 3/4 cup drained canned tomatoes and cook down until no free liquid remains.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of pepper divided over twelve eggs is assertive but workable; the 3/4 teaspoon of sugar is there to balance sharp tomatoes and can be dropped with sweet ripe ones.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs. Serve immediately in the ramekins with toast; they continue cooking as they sit.
En cocotte simply means "in a small pot" — the cocotte was the little individual dish, and the technique of baking eggs in one over a bed of sauce or cream was a fixture of French hotel breakfast and supper cookery by the late nineteenth century. This version's onion, green pepper and tomato base is closer to a Creole or Portugaise garnish than to the plain cream more usual in Paris kitchens. The surname attached to the title is often said to reflect a habit of the great restaurant kitchens of the period, in which cooks named variations after regular patrons or the guest for whom a dish was first improvised, though the convention is more plausible than documented; such names were rarely recorded beyond the menu card, and the identity behind "Bradshaw" is not recoverable from the book itself.