Home › The World's Kitchen › Eggs, Suzette
Eggs, Suzette
Thoroughly wipe six even-sized, raw, unpeeled potatoes, place in a small roasting pan and set in oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, clip a piece off surface of each, scoop out interiors and press soft part through potato masher into a bowl. Add a half gill hot milk, tablespoon butter, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, and sharply mix with a wooden spoon until smooth. Line the interiors and sides of potatoes, with preparation, crack a fresh egg into each potato, season evenly with three saltspoons salt, a saltspoon pepper, sprinkle a little grated Parmesan cheese over and set in oven six minutes, remove, dress on a dish and serve.
A baked potato hollowed out, relined with its own mash and finished with an egg cracked into the cavity. The recipe assumes you know your oven; the two things it leaves vague are heat and the egg timing.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of pepper in the mash is three-quarters of a teaspoon, which is assertive but deliberate; the second seasoning of three saltspoons salt is divided among six eggs.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons. Add it hot and add it gradually — six scooped-out potato shells yield less flesh than you expect, and the mash needs to stay stiff enough to line the walls.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake the potatoes at 425F; thirty-five minutes will only do it for small to medium potatoes, so test with a skewer before scooping.
- The six minutes will not set the eggThis is the hinge. Six minutes is very unlikely to set the white in a potato shell. Expect 12 to 18 minutes at 400F for a set white and a soft yolk, and judge by the white turning opaque rather than by the clock.
- Clip a piece off the surfaceCut a lengthwise lid rather than an end cap, and leave a shell about a quarter-inch thick so it holds its shape. Sit each potato on a trimmed base if it rocks, or the egg runs out.
- Room for the eggA large egg is about 3 tablespoons, so allow a cavity of at least a quarter cup to hold it. Line the shell thinly with the mash and hollow a clear well; any surplus mash is better piped round the rim than packed inside.
- ParmesanGrate it finely so it melts in the short bake. A coarse grate sits on top and browns before the white sets.
- YieldSix potatoes, one egg each — a light supper for three, or six as a first course. They must go straight to the table; the yolk carries on cooking in the hot shell.
The name places this in the long line of dishes tagged *Suzette* in the French repertoire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a label attached to everything from crêpes to garnished eggs without much consistency of meaning. Eggs baked in a hollowed potato belong to a broader family of *œufs en cocotte* and *pommes de terre farcies*, in which the vegetable itself becomes the ramekin. This book was compiled in the era of grand hotel cookery being translated for American kitchens.