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Fried Eggs, Paysanne
Broil twelve very thin slices bacon for one minute on each side, remove and cut each slice in two. Arrange twelve pieces in a lightly buttered frying pan, then carefully break twelve fresh eggs over them. Season with a half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, place balance of bacon over eggs, fry on fire for one minute, then set in oven for five minutes. Remove, carefully glide them on large hot dish, sprinkle a half teaspoon chopped chives over and serve.
A dozen eggs baked over bacon in a single pan, finished in the oven so the whites set without the bottoms toughening. The scale is for a table of six, and the method assumes one pan that goes from burner to oven.
- PanUse a heavy ovenproof skillet, ideally 12 inches, or the twelve eggs will crowd and run together. A rimmed pan of that size holds them in one layer with the bacon underneath and on top.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, and none can be inferred from the text; readers would have used whatever their range oven was running. Five minutes to set the whites suggests a fairly hot oven, and something around 400F is a reasonable modern equivalent; a cooler oven will take correspondingly longer.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon. That is assertive for twelve eggs but deliberate, and white pepper is used so no black specks show against the whites.
- The bacon is only part-cookedOne minute a side under the broiler renders a little fat and firms the slices; it does not crisp them. Very thin slices are essential, since thick modern bacon will still be flabby after the five minutes in the oven. Cook it further before assembling if you want it crisp.
- Breaking the eggsCrack each egg into a cup first and slide it in. Twelve eggs broken directly over hot bacon fat is how you get shell fragments and broken yolks in a dish that is meant to come out whole.
- DonenessOne minute on the fire plus five in the oven leaves the yolks soft to runny. If that matters for who is eating, use pasteurized eggs or give it a few minutes longer, but the whites will firm past pleasant.
- Sliding it out"Glide them on large hot dish" means the whole sheet of eggs is served intact rather than portioned. Butter the pan properly and loosen the edges with a thin spatula first; a cold platter will chill the eggs before they reach the table.
- YieldTwelve eggs and twelve rashers serve six generously, four as a main course.
Paysanne is French for peasant or country-style, a menu label often taken to signal a plain rustic treatment rather than a specific set of ingredients: bacon or salt pork, sometimes potatoes or cabbage, nothing sauced or garnished beyond a scatter of herbs. In an American book of this era the word did double duty, lending a French air to what is essentially bacon and eggs while promising the diner that nothing elaborate was coming. The pan-to-oven finish is worth noting: cooking eggs entirely on the burner browns the undersides before the whites set, and the brief spell in the oven would set the tops with radiant heat instead. Recipes like this one, written for a dozen eggs and a large hot dish, suggest by their scale a kitchen cooking for a table rather than a household.