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Eggs Cocotte, Lyonnaise
Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add two finely minced white onions; season with two saltspoons salt and a saltspoon white pepper; lightly mix, cover the pan with a plate and let slowly cook for fifteen minutes; take off the plate, add a tablespoon good vinegar and half teaspoon chopped parsley, mix a little; then divide the onions into six shirred-egg dishes. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Season them with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, equally divided. Set the eggs in the oven for three minutes. Remove and serve.
A dozen eggs baked over sweated onions, in the style of Lyon. The whole thing hangs on two adjustments: the onions want to stew without colouring, and three minutes will not set an egg in any modern oven.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of salt and one of white pepper season the onions; the teaspoon of salt for the eggs is spread across twelve of them, which is reasonable.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are shallow individual gratin dishes or ramekins, commonly around 4-6 inches across; the classic cocotte is a small straight-sided porcelain pot. Butter them, and choose something wide enough that two eggs sit in a single layer rather than piling up.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 375-400F.
- The timing is far too shortThree minutes leaves the whites liquid. Expect 8-12 minutes at 375F depending on the dish, and pull them when the whites are just opaque and the yolks still tremble; they carry on cooking in the hot china.
- Cooking the onionsThe plate over the pan is a lid that lets a little steam escape. Keep the heat low enough that the onions turn translucent and sweet without browning at all, which is the point of the Lyonnaise treatment; fifteen minutes is about right for two onions finely minced.
- The vinegarAdded at the very end, after the fifteen minutes of stewing, it should hit hot onions and lose most of its sharpness. 'Good vinegar' here most likely means a wine vinegar rather than distilled white.
- Soft yolksEggs baked to a runny yolk are not pasteurised. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, cook until both white and yolk are firm, or use pasteurised eggs.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each. As written this is a substantial breakfast or a light supper with bread.
Cocotte is a French word for a small ovenproof pot, and eggs baked in one, alone or on a bed of something savoury, were a standard item of the French repertoire long before they became a brunch dish. "Lyonnaise" on a menu means onions, a shorthand usually traced to the reputation of Lyon and its surrounding country for onion cookery; the finish of vinegar and parsley over slowly sweated onions is the same gesture that turns leftover boiled potatoes or a piece of calf's liver into a Lyonnais dish. Setting out a dozen eggs in six individual dishes suits a style of service in which hot food went to the table in the vessel it was cooked in, which is what shirred-egg dishes were made for.