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Fried Eggs, Ham Sauce
Cut two ounces cooked lean ham in very small square pieces, place them in a saucepan with two tablespoons sherry, cover pan and let steam for five minutes. Pour in one and a half gills demi-glace with half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and saltspoon cayenne, lightly mix and boil for five minutes. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a large frying pan, break in twelve fresh eggs, season with half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, fry for a minute, then set in oven for five minutes. Remove carefully glide them on a hot dish, pour ham sauce over and serve.
A shirred-egg dish built on classical French sauce work, written for a restaurant kitchen with stock on hand. The measurements are Gilded Age professional shorthand.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of demi-glace is about 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon: the cayenne is a scant pinch, but the three saltspoons of pepper come to 3/4 teaspoon, which is assertive by modern taste.
- Demi-glace is the whole dishEverything else here is trivial; the sauce carries it. Demi-glace is brown sauce reduced with veal or beef stock to a glossy, lightly syrupy consistency. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; a thin canned gravy will leave the dish watery.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Treat it as moderate, 350F, and pull the pan while the whites are just set and the yolks still liquid. Five minutes is a maximum, not a target.
- ButterA tablespoon and a half for twelve eggs assumes a well-seasoned heavy pan. Use more, or divide the eggs between two pans, or they will stick and tear when you try to slide them out.
- Sliding the eggs outThe instruction to "glide them on a hot dish" is the difficult step: the sheet of twelve eggs must come out whole. An ovenproof skillet you can bring straight to the table, or two smaller pans, avoids the problem entirely.
- The hamTwo ounces of cooked lean ham, cut small, is a garnish rather than a component. Steaming it in sherry under a lid draws out its saltiness into the sauce, so hold off on salting the sauce until you taste it.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a lunch or supper dish, with bread to catch the sauce.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), written by a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the habits of that world: eggs treated as a vehicle for a classical sauce, and demi-glace assumed to be simmering somewhere within reach. Eggs cooked flat in butter and finished in the oven belong to the family the French call oeufs sur le plat, and dressing them with a brown sauce studded with ham and sherry is the same logic that produced eggs Bordelaise, Bercy and a dozen other named variations in period menus. The dish also reflects how kitchen economy worked at that scale: two ounces of leftover ham and a splash of sherry turned a stock reduction into something with a name of its own.