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Eggs, Soleil
Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes. Boil twelve fresh eggs in boiling water for eight minutes; take up and drop into cold water for a minute, remove and shell them. Cut each one into halves, lengthwise; then cut each half into three equal strips, also lengthwise. Arrange the pieces evenly in the egg dishes, giving a sun-like shape. Spread a cream sauce over the eggs; sprinkle a teaspoon grated Parmesan cheese over the eggs of each dish. Then place in a hot oven and bake for five minutes, or until they obtain a nice colour; remove and serve.
A tidy gratin of hard-boiled eggs, sauced and browned in individual dishes. The only real skill is in the boiling and the peeling.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall shallow ovenproof dishes, roughly 4-5 inches across, one per serving. Ramekins or a single small gratin dish work; the wide flat shape is what lets the egg strips fan out in the intended sun pattern.
- "A hot oven"Read this as roughly 400-450F. Everything in the dish is already cooked, so the five minutes is purely for colour on the cheese and sauce; the broiler does the same job in two to three minutes if the sauce is hot going in.
- Eight minutes is the hingeEight minutes in already-boiling water gives a yolk just set through but still tender, which is what holds the strips together without turning them chalky. Longer, and the reheating in the oven pushes them to the rubbery, sulphurous stage.
- The cold water is not optionalA minute in cold water stops the cooking and shrinks the egg slightly from the shell, which is the difference between clean strips and torn ones. Eggs a week or two old peel far more easily than very fresh ones, despite the recipe's instruction.
- Cutting into twelve stripsCutting into six strips -- Halve lengthwise, then cut each half lengthwise into three, giving six strips per egg and 72 pieces from a dozen. Use a thin knife wiped between cuts, or a wire egg slicer, and expect some yolk to crumble; scatter it over the top rather than discarding it.
- Cream sauceThe book means a plain white sauce made with milk or cream, thick enough to coat -- about 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk. Season it properly with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg, since the eggs bring almost none.
- CheeseA teaspoon of Parmesan per dish is modest; it browns rather than flavours. Grate it finely so it melts in the short bake, and add a little more if you want the top to read as a gratin.
- YieldSix dishes, two eggs each -- a lunch or supper course with bread and a salad, not a first course for a long dinner.
The name of this egg dish comes simply from the arrangement: pale strips of white radiating from a centre, sauced and gilded in the oven. Filippini's International Cook Book belongs to the Delmonico tradition of New York restaurant cooking, where a kitchen with a standing supply of hard-boiled eggs and a pot of béchamel could turn out a named, plated dish in minutes -- which is largely what this is. Individual shirred-egg dishes were in use in restaurants and better households at the time, and their presence here is a reminder that many recipes of the period assume a cupboard of specialised small vessels most modern kitchens no longer keep.