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Fried Eggs with Sausage
Split six country sausages in halves, lengthwise, and place in a frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter. Fry for three minutes on one side, turn, and carefully crack twelve fresh eggs over them, season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, evenly divided over the eggs, fry for one minute, then set in the oven for five minutes. Remove, carefully glide them on a large hot dish and serve.
A one-pan breakfast dish that finishes under oven heat rather than on the burner, which is the whole point of it: the eggs set from above without the bottoms going leathery. Two details need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon spread over twelve eggs. That is a generous but deliberate amount; white pepper was the standard choice where black flecks would show.
- Country sausagesThese are fresh (uncured, unsmoked) pork links, usually seasoned with sage and pepper — close to what a US supermarket sells as breakfast sausage. Links rather than patties, since they are to be split lengthwise.
- Cook the sausage through firstThe original gives three minutes on one side, then turns the sausages and immediately cracks the eggs over them; with one minute on the range and five in the oven, that will not reliably bring raw pork links to 160F, and the eggs will be done before the sausage is. Split them, brown them properly on both sides, and only then add the eggs.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate-to-hot oven, 375-400F, sets the whites in about five minutes; hotter than that and the yolks tighten before the whites finish.
- The panIt goes from burner to oven, so it must be ovenproof — cast iron or a heavy steel skillet, no plastic handle. Twelve eggs need a 12-inch pan at minimum, or split the whole thing between two.
- Cracking the eggsBreak each egg into a cup first and slide it in around the sausage halves. Cracking a dozen directly over a hot pan risks a broken yolk or a piece of shell.
- Gliding it outThe dish is meant to leave the pan in one sheet onto a heated platter, so butter the pan well and loosen the edges before tipping. Serves four to six.
Fried eggs cooked in the fat of the meat beside them is about as old as the frying pan, and the finishing-in-the-oven step suggests a professional kitchen habit: a pan of eggs could be held in the oven while plates went out, and even top heat sets a dozen yolks at once in a way that a burner alone will not. The International Cook Book came out of that professional world — Alexander Filippini spent his career in New York restaurant kitchens, most famously Delmonico's. The instruction to split the sausages lengthwise is the practical heart of it: flat halves give more browned surface, sit level under the eggs, and cook faster than whole links.