Home › The World's Kitchen › Fried Eggs with Parsley
Fried Eggs with Parsley
Heat two tablespoons melted butter in black frying pan, carefully crack in twelve fresh eggs, evenly season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Fry them for one minute, then set in oven for five minutes, remove, carefully glide them on a hot dish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over and serve.
A plain oven-finished fried egg, sized for a household table. The original assumes a large cast-iron pan and an oven already hot from other work, so the two things worth pinning down are pan area and temperature.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon — the same as the salt. That is assertive for twelve eggs but not unreasonable.
- Black frying panThis means seasoned cast iron or heavy black steel, chosen because it goes from burner to oven without complaint. Any oven-safe skillet works; a nonstick pan with a plastic handle does not.
- Pan sizeTwelve eggs will not sit in a single layer in a 10-inch skillet. Use a 14-inch pan, or divide between two pans and stagger them in the oven.
- ButterTwo tablespoons for twelve eggs is thin coverage in a modern pan. Increase to three or four so the whites release cleanly, and get the butter foaming before the eggs go in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, sets the whites in about five minutes and leaves the yolks soft; hotter than 400F and the undersides toughen before the tops are done.
- The hingeThe one minute on the burner is only to set the bottoms — the whites should still be slack when the pan goes into the oven. Frying until the whites are firm and then adding five minutes of oven time gives hard yolks.
- Gliding them outLoosen the whole sheet of eggs at the edges with a thin spatula and slide it onto the warmed platter in one piece rather than lifting eggs individually. A cold dish undoes the oven work immediately.
- YieldSix servings at two eggs each. Chop the parsley while the eggs are in the oven; it dulls within minutes of cutting.
Eggs finished in the oven rather than flipped in the pan — close to the French oeufs sur le plat approach — appear in early twentieth-century cookbooks, and the dozen-egg quantity suits service on a single platter. No oven temperature is given, which is unsurprising for a period when a cook working from a range judged heat by hand. Chopped parsley over eggs is the plainest sort of parsley garnish, adding color to a pale plate as well as flavor.