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Fried Eggs with Fresh Mushrooms
Peel, wash well and finely slice six medium, fresh mushrooms, then place in a frying pan with one and a half tablespoons melted butter. Season with two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon pepper, and lightly fry for three minutes, lightly tossing them. Evenly spread the mushrooms in pan, carefully crack twelve fresh eggs over and fry for one minute, then set in the oven for five minutes. Remove, carefully glide on a dish and serve.
A one-pan oeufs sur le plat, finished in the oven rather than flipped. The recipe assumes a heavy skillet wide enough to hold twelve eggs in a single layer, and a cook who knows when to pull them.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of salt and one of pepper is about 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, seasoning the mushrooms only — the eggs go in unseasoned and want a pinch at the table.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350-375F, should set the whites in roughly the five minutes stated; hotter and the yolks tighten and the butter browns.
- Pan sizeTwelve eggs need a 12-inch skillet at minimum to sit in one layer, and it must be ovenproof and well seasoned or the dish will not "glide" anywhere. Two 10-inch pans split between them is more realistic.
- Peeling mushroomsPeriod cookbooks routinely instruct peeling cultivated mushrooms. Modern button and cremini mushrooms need only a wipe; peeling costs flavour and texture for nothing.
- WashingTake 'wash well' lightly: rinse quickly and dry them, or they will steam in the butter rather than fry and release liquid under the eggs.
- Three minutes is shortSliced mushrooms need closer to five to eight minutes over decent heat to drive off their water and take colour. Any moisture left in the pan will thin the whites.
- DonenessOne minute on the burner plus five in the oven gives set whites and soft yolks. If soft yolks are not wanted, the extra time should be taken in the oven, not on the stove, where the bottoms will toughen.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a lunch or supper dish, two eggs each, with bread. It is not a recipe that scales down gracefully — halve the eggs and mushrooms and use a smaller pan.
The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its structure — short, unfussy, professional paragraphs organised by main ingredient — reflects a restaurant kitchen rather than a home one. The dish itself is the French oeufs sur le plat: eggs broken over a bed of something savoury, set gently with bottom and top heat, and sent out in the pan or slid whole onto a platter. The insistence on fresh mushrooms is a period marker. In 1906 the alternative was tinned or dried, and commercial mushroom growing in the United States was still a young trade concentrated in a few districts, so fresh ones were a point worth specifying on a menu."}