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Fried Eggs with Tomatoes
Plunge three good-sized, sound red tomatoes in boiling water for half minute, lift them up, skin nicely, slice each into four equal slices and place on a plate. Season with a teaspoon salt, one teaspoon fine sugar and one-quarter teaspoon white pepper; then lightly turn them in flour. Heat in a small frying pan one teaspoon melted butter; place two slices tomatoes in the pan and briskly fry for one minute on each side. Set the pan a little away from the brisk fire, then carefully crack two fresh eggs, one on top of each slice of tomato, and set the pan in the oven to bake for four minutes. Remove and gently slide them on a hot dish. Proceed to prepare five more in a similar manner and serve.
A breakfast or supper egg dish from a book that assumes a coal range and a cook willing to work in pairs. The method is sound; the logistics need rethinking.
- YieldThree tomatoes cut into four slices each gives twelve slices, cooked two at a time with an egg on each — twelve eggs in six batches. That serves six as a first course or breakfast, one plate at a time.
- Cook it in one pan insteadThe instruction to "proceed to prepare five more" reflects a kitchen with several small pans and a hot range going all morning. A single large ovenproof skillet, or a heavy sheet pan brushed with butter, takes all twelve slices at once and holds the eggs in place just as well.
- The oven temperatureNo number is given. Four minutes to set an egg white implies a hot oven; something around 425F is a reasonable modern equivalent, though the book's "brisk fire" describes the stovetop, not the oven setting. A cooler oven will leave the whites slack.
- Whites and yolksFour minutes at that heat will set the whites and leave the yolks loose. If you want the whites firm through, give them six to seven minutes and accept a thicker yolk.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt across three tomatoes is heavy by current taste, and salting before flouring draws water that fights the browning. Season lightly, flour, and salt again at the table.
- ButterOne teaspoon per two slices is scant even in a well-seasoned pan. Use a tablespoon for a large skillet, and clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix if the pan runs hot — plain butter at frying heat will darken in the time the flour needs to colour.
- Tomatoes"Sound red" means firm and ripe, not soft. Slices from a very ripe summer tomato collapse under the egg; a slightly underripe fruit, or a firm plum tomato cut lengthwise, holds its shape.
- The pan must go in the ovenObvious to a cook with iron pans, less so now. Anything with a plastic or composite handle stays on the stovetop; cover it and cook the eggs gently instead.
The book is Alexander Filippini's, written out of a career at Delmonico's in New York, and it gathers dishes from many national tables — eggs fried on a bed of tomato belong to the Mediterranean, where the combination turns up under many names from Provence to Spain to the Levant. The flouring is worth noting: dusting the seasoned slices before they meet the butter gives them a thin crust that keeps the tomato from weeping into the egg. The one-pan-per-serving method is telling. A hotel kitchen had a range top the size of a table and a line of small pans, so cooking twelve slices in six goes cost nothing; the home cook reading the same page in her own kitchen was being handed a recipe that had not really been translated for her.