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Eggs, Palermitaines
Peel and remove seeds from three fresh tomatoes cut in very small square pieces, then place them in a baking dish. Add six anchovies in oil cut in short pieces, one ounce smoked beef tongue cut in exceedingly small square pieces, season with a half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, pour one tablespoon good olive oil over, and set dish on range for ten minutes. Remove, crack twelve fresh eggs over this stew, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, set eggs in oven for six minutes, remove and serve in the same dish.
A Sicilian-style baked egg dish that comes together in under half an hour, provided the pan can go from burner to oven. The original oven time is the one figure worth ignoring.
- Six minutes is not enoughSix minutes is optimistic -- Twelve eggs cracked over a warm tomato base are unlikely to set in six minutes in a domestic oven. Expect 12-18 minutes at 375F, judging by the whites: pull the dish when they are opaque and just firm, since carryover heat in a hot baking dish keeps cooking the yolks.
- No oven temperature is givenFilippini assumed a range oven of unspecified heat. 375F is the sensible reading for a shallow egg dish; hotter than 400F and the tomato base scorches at the edges before the whites set.
- "Set dish on range"This means direct stovetop heat, not the oven. Use a metal or enameled cast-iron dish that will take a burner, and cook the tomato-anchovy mixture over medium heat until the tomatoes have given up most of their liquid, or the eggs will sit in a watery pool.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of pepper is three-quarters of a teaspoon, and two is half. That is a lot of pepper by modern habit, though it suits the anchovies.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt across the two stages, on top of six anchovies and cured tongue, will read as very salty now. Salt the tomatoes lightly and hold the second addition until you taste the base.
- Smoked beef tongueRarely stocked outside good delis and butchers. An ounce is a garnish quantity, and finely diced speck, prosciutto or a smoky pastrami stands in without distorting the dish.
- TomatoesPeeling is easiest with a 15-second dip in boiling water. Out of season, well-drained canned plum tomatoes give a better result than pale fresh ones, since the base is meant to be concentrated rather than juicy.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a main course or eight or more as part of a larger meal. Halve it in a 10-inch skillet if cooking for three or four.
The International Cook Book is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its ambition was to draw dishes from every cuisine its author could name. Recipes like this one are labelled by place rather than described by it: palermitaine simply signals Palermo, and the shorthand of tomato, anchovy and cured meat was what a professional kitchen of the period understood Sicilian cooking to mean. The dish itself belongs to the broad family of eggs baked over a savoury base found all round the Mediterranean, from Spanish huevos al plato to the North African pan of eggs in tomato, and it survives in restaurant kitchens for the same reason it appeared here: it feeds a table from one dish, uses cheap ingredients, and can be assembled from a larder.