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Fried Eggs, Lamontagne
Thoroughly wipe four fresh, red tomatoes, then cut them in slices. Finely chop three branches parsley, one branch chervil, three shallots and half a bean of garlic; place the four articles in a corner of a clean cloth and squeeze out the juice, then place the herbs on a plate, adding to them two tablespoons fresh bread crumbs. Mix them well. Season with half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons sugar and two saltspoons pepper, then turn the slices of tomatoes in the herbs. Heat a tablespoon of melted butter in a frying pan, arrange the tomatoes in pan, one beside another, and briskly fry them for one and a half minutes on each side. Lift them up with a skimmer. Dress on a hot dish and keep hot. Prepare twelve fried eggs turned over, then carefully glide the eggs over the tomatoes. Pour a gill of hot tomato sauce over all and serve.
A composed egg dish built on herbed fried tomato slices. Everything hinges on the tomatoes being firm enough to hold their shape through a fast fry, and on the whole thing arriving hot at once.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning is 3/4 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. A gill is half a cup of tomato sauce, which is modest for twelve eggs; a cup is more realistic if you want sauce on every serving.
- A branch, a beanA "branch" of parsley or chervil is a sprig. "Half a bean of garlic" means half a clove, probably a literal-minded rendering of the French gousse, which properly means a pod or husk. Chervil is worth seeking out for its anise note; tarragon in half the quantity is the usual substitute.
- Squeezing the herbsWringing the chopped herbs and shallots in a cloth removes the water that would otherwise turn the breadcrumbs to paste and make the coating slide off in the pan. Do not skip it, and do not skip drying the tomato slices either.
- Cut them thickThe recipe does not say how thick. Thin slices risk collapsing over the three minutes of brisk frying the recipe calls for, so use firm, slightly underripe tomatoes, cutting four or five substantial slices from each and discarding the rounded ends.
- More butter than one tablespoonA single tablespoon will not carry sixteen to twenty crumbed slices; you will be frying in batches and adding butter each time. Keep the heat brisk so the crumbs colour before the tomato softens.
- "Fried eggs turned over"This is over-easy: fried on one side, flipped, and given only a few seconds more so the yolk stays liquid. Fry them last, while the tomatoes hold in a low oven.
- YieldTwelve eggs and four tomatoes would serve about six as a lunch or supper dish, two eggs and two or three tomato slices each. The recipe itself gives no number.
This comes from the era when hotel and restaurant kitchens attached a name to every variation on a standard preparation, and cookbooks aimed at ambitious American households copied them down wholesale. Filippini's International Cook Book runs to many egg dishes distinguished only by their garnish, each with a surname or place attached -- a form inherited directly from the French professional repertoire, where oeufs followed by a proper noun told a trained cook exactly what to put on the plate. Who Lamontagne was is not recorded here, and such names were sometimes said to honor a patron rather than any documented person. The dish itself is a close relative of the fried tomato and egg combinations that turn up across the Mediterranean; what marks this version as professional French is the mixture of parsley, chervil, shallot and garlic wrung dry in a cloth before it meets the breadcrumbs.