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Fried Eggs with Tarragon Butter
Thoroughly heat half teaspoon butter in a small frying pan; carefully crack in two fresh eggs. Season with half saltspoon salt and a third of a saltspoon white pepper; fry on the range for two minutes, then place in a brisk oven for one minute. Remove, carefully glide the eggs on a large hot dish and keep hot. Repeat, making five more similar operations. When all on the dish, sprinkle over a teaspoon very finely chopped fresh tarragon.
Place an ounce of butter in a small frying pan on the range; toss until it gets a nice brown colour, then pour in a tablespoon good tarragon vinegar; lightly mix and immediately pour it over the eggs, evenly divided, and serve. N. B. If convenient, use two small pans at a time in place of one.
A French egg course scaled for a dinner party: twelve eggs cooked two at a time, then finished with browned butter sharpened by vinegar. The technique is simple; the timing is not forgiving.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so each pair of eggs gets about an eighth teaspoon salt and a scant pinch of white pepper. Across six pairs that comes to roughly 3/4 teaspoon salt in total.
- A brisk ovenBrisk means hot, generally taken as somewhere in the region of 400-450F. The eggs go in only to set the whites over the top without hardening the yolks, so the oven should already be at temperature before you start the first pair.
- YieldTwelve eggs, six pairs, serving six as a first or luncheon course. The finishing butter and vinegar are for the whole platter, not per pair.
- Keeping them hotThe weak point is the platter. Warm the serving dish thoroughly and hold it somewhere gently warm; twelve eggs cooked in sequence means the first pair waits several minutes, and a cold dish will kill them.
- Two pansTake the author's note seriously and use two or three pans at once. Nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron in a small size, and half a teaspoon of butter per pair really is enough if the pan is properly hot before the eggs go in.
- The browned butterThis is the hinge. The ounce of butter (2 tablespoons) should go to a nut-brown, not black; the milk solids toast in seconds once the foam subsides. The original adds the vinegar with the pan still on the range; taking it off the heat first will cut down the spitting. The mixture goes over the eggs at once, while it is still foaming.
- Tarragon vinegarWidely sold, but easily made by steeping fresh tarragon in white wine vinegar for a week or two. Plain white wine vinegar with extra chopped tarragon is a reasonable stand-in; cider vinegar is too fruity here.
- DonenessTwo minutes on the range and one in the oven leaves the yolks liquid. That is the intent of the dish. If you are cooking for someone who should avoid soft yolks, pasteurized shell eggs are the usual answer.
The dish belongs to the French service that ran through American hotel cooking around 1900, when Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book was compiled from a career in New York restaurant kitchens. The finish is a version of browned butter with acid, a sauce more familiar in its darker form over skate or brains, here scaled down for eggs; tarragon is called estragon in French kitchens.