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Fried Eggs with Salt Pork
Cut from a piece of lean salt pork twelve very thin slices; trim off the skin of each piece, arrange on a large frying pan with a tablespoon melted lard, fry two minutes on one side only, then turn carefully and crack twelve fresh eggs over them. Equally season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, fry for one minute, then set in over for four minutes, remove, carefully slide them on a large hot dish and serve.
A twelve-egg pan breakfast built on the old habit of frying eggs directly in pork fat. The method is sound; the text needs a few translations.
- "Set in over" is a typo for ovenThe pan goes into the oven to finish the tops of the eggs without flipping them. The recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 375F, for the stated four minutes will set the whites while leaving the yolks soft.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is generally reckoned a quarter teaspoon, though period sources vary, so two of them make about half a teaspoon of white pepper. With the half teaspoon of salt that is a firm seasoning, and the pork brings its own salt on top of it.
- Choose the right salt porkAsk for lean salt pork or streaky salt-cured belly, not fatback, which is nearly all fat and will render to nothing. Slices should be about an eighth of an inch thick.
- Taste before saltingModern salt pork varies wildly in cure strength. If it is very salty, soak the slices in cold water for 15 minutes and pat dry, then cut the added salt back or leave it out.
- The tablespoon of lardOnly needed to keep lean slices from sticking before their own fat renders. If there is a pool of grease after the pork has cooked, pour most of it off before cracking in the eggs or the whites will spread and fry hard at the edges.
- Pan and oven-safetyA cast-iron or other all-metal skillet is required, since the pan goes into the oven. Twelve slices of pork and twelve eggs need a 12-inch pan at minimum; two pans are more realistic.
- Crack the eggs into a cup firstWith twelve eggs going into a hot pan in quick succession, breaking each into a cup and sliding it over a pork slice keeps the yolks intact and the eggs evenly spaced.
- YieldSix servings at two eggs and two slices of pork apiece. Serve immediately; the residual heat of an iron pan keeps cooking the yolks.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), and it is a good example of how a professional chef of the Delmonico's generation wrote up plain American food alongside his French and Italian material. Salt pork was a mainstay of the American household larder because it kept without ice, and frying eggs in its rendered fat was common farmhouse and boarding-house breakfast practice before bacon in thin commercial slices became the norm. What marks this as a restaurant man's version is the scale and the finish: twelve portions built in one pan, seasoned by measure rather than by eye, and slid whole onto a hot platter for service rather than plated individually. The brief turn in the oven to set the tops is the same trick used for oeufs sur le plat.