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Fried Eggs, Schwitz
Place two tablespoons melted butter in a large frying pan with three tablespoons bread crumbs and toss on fire until a nice light colour, then break in twelve fresh eggs. Season with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, and sprinkle over two tablespoons grated Swiss cheese. Set in hot oven for five minutes, remove, carefully glide on large hot dish and serve.
Twelve eggs baked on a bed of buttered crumbs with Gruyère — essentially shirred eggs, finished in the oven rather than on the stove. Two things decide the result: the crumbs must be properly toasted before the eggs go in, and the pan must be able to go into the oven.
- Pan choice"Frying pan" here means a heavy, ovenproof skillet or a shallow gratin dish; anything with a plastic or hollow handle will not survive. A 12-inch pan is the minimum for twelve eggs in a single layer.
- Hot ovenA "hot oven" in this period means roughly 425–450F. Five minutes at that heat sets the whites of eggs added to an already-hot buttered pan; in a cooler oven they will still be liquid.
- DonenessFive minutes gives set whites and frankly liquid yolks. If soft yolks are not wanted, expect eight to ten minutes and check the whites nearest the centre, which set last.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper -- assertive, and set against only half a teaspoon of salt, though the cheese brings salt of its own.
- Swiss cheeseGrated Swiss in a 1900s American kitchen means Gruyère or Emmental, not the mild pre-sliced supermarket product. Two tablespoons is a seasoning rather than a topping; it is meant to melt into the whites, not blanket them.
- The crumbsToss the crumbs in butter until they are genuinely light brown before breaking in the eggs. Untoasted crumbs go pasty under the eggs and the dish loses the crisp base that distinguishes it from plain baked eggs.
- Getting it out"Carefully glide on large hot dish" is the whole trick — the crumb layer lets the sheet of eggs slide free in one piece. Warm the serving dish, tilt the pan, and coax rather than lift.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a breakfast or luncheon dish. Halve everything for three and use an 8-inch pan so the eggs still sit in one layer.
"Schwitz" appears to be an anglicized spelling of Schweiz, Switzerland -- the name reads as "Swiss fried eggs," and the label seems to rest on the grated Gruyere-type cheese rather than on any particular Swiss village. The method is close to what nineteenth-century kitchens called shirred or sur le plat eggs: eggs broken whole into a buttered dish and set by radiant heat, so the yolks stay glossy and unbroken instead of being scrambled. The crumb base keeps the whites off the hot metal and gives the finished sheet something to slide on.