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Moulded Eggs on Toast
Lightly butter twelve individual pudding moulds. Crack one fresh egg into each, evenly season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, lay on a tin, pour hot water in the tin-up to half the height of moulds. Set in oven five minutes. Remove, have six freshly prepared slices of buttered toast arranged on a large hot dish. Unmould the eggs, place two on each slice of toast and serve.
This is œufs moulés, the French classical baked-egg preparation, written for a kitchen that owned a dozen little metal moulds. It translates directly to ramekins and a roasting pan, but the timing and seasoning both need attention.
- The mouldsIndividual pudding or dariole moulds hold roughly 1/3 cup. Small ramekins, custard cups or a deep muffin tin all work. Butter them heavily and cold, right into the corners, or the eggs will tear coming out.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two is half a teaspoon of white pepper. Note that the half teaspoon of salt and the pepper are meant to be divided across all twelve eggs, not put into each one.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the original. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a water bath of this kind; hotter and the whites toughen and weep before the yolks set.
- The water bath is the pointPour the water in hot and to half the height of the moulds. It buffers the eggs against direct heat so the whites set to a smooth custard rather than a rubbery skin. Boiling water in the pan will overshoot; hot from the tap or just off the boil is enough.
- Five minutes is too shortIn a modern oven at 350F these need 10 to 14 minutes for whites that are fully set and yolks still soft. Judge by the white: it should be opaque and firm at the edge with no clear liquid. If you want the yolks firm throughout, go to 18 minutes.
- UnmouldingLet them stand a minute out of the water, run a thin knife around the rim, then invert onto the toast. Eggs that come straight from the bath are still setting and will slump.
- The toastCut it to fit two eggs side by side, butter it hot, and do not make it ahead. Soft-set eggs release liquid and a slice that has been sitting will go limp under them.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each, intended as a breakfast or luncheon dish.
Baked eggs in buttered moulds, set in a water bath and turned out whole, are a fixture of nineteenth-century French professional cookery under the name œufs moulés — a way of serving an egg with the neatness of a poached one but without the vinegar water and the ragged edges. The technique belongs to a kitchen equipped with tinned-copper dariole moulds by the dozen, which may be why the recipe calls for twelve without comment. Its appearance in an American international collection of this period is often taken to reflect how thoroughly the French repertoire had been absorbed into hotel and restaurant service on this side of the Atlantic; the white pepper rather than black is traditionally explained as a way of keeping the finished white free of specks.