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Shirred Eggs Au Cerfeuilles
Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes, pick leaves from three branches chervil, then evenly sprinkle in the six dishes. Carefully crack two fresh eggs in each dish, season evenly with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, baste yolks with a very little hot butter, set in the oven for five minutes, remove and serve.
A plain French baked-egg dish that needs only two decisions the original leaves out: how hot the oven is, and how long the whites really take.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are shallow individual dishes, ovenproof and about 4-5 inches across — a small gratin dish, a cast-iron egg pan, or a wide ramekin all work. Depth matters: a tall ramekin steams the eggs rather than setting them.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Set it to 375-400F; hotter and the butter browns and the yolks film over before the whites set.
- Five minutes is optimisticTwo eggs in a cold buttered dish will likely need 8-12 minutes at 375F for the whites to lose their translucency, with the yolks still soft. Preheating the dishes with the butter in them is the practical fix.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is a half teaspoon of pepper, divided among six dishes. Along with the half teaspoon of salt, that is a light hand for twelve eggs; taste and adjust.
- ChervilCerfeuil, one of the classic fines herbes, tastes faintly of anise and parsley and is sold fresh only sporadically. Three branches yields roughly two tablespoons of picked leaves. Dried chervil is close to flavourless; a mix of flat-leaf parsley with a little fresh tarragon is a better stand-in.
- Herbs under the eggsScattering the leaves into the buttered dish first, as written, keeps them off the exposed surface, where delicate chervil can scorch and turn bitter.
- Basting the yolksThe recipe calls for 'a very little' hot butter over each yolk before baking, which sets a thin cooked film that helps keep the yolk from drying while the white finishes. Use it sparingly or the dish turns greasy.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each. Serve in the dishes, immediately — shirred eggs carry on cooking in their own heat.
Shirred eggs are the American name for what French kitchens call oeufs sur le plat: eggs baked and served in the same small dish, with butter and whatever seasoning the cook chooses. The origin of "shirred" is genuinely uncertain, though it is often traced to the shallow shirred-egg dish itself rather than to any cooking action. Chervil appears here as one of the four fines herbes of classical French cookery, prized in professional kitchens. Alexander Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and his books catalogue dishes exactly this way: hot dishes and a cook who already knows what a shirred egg should look like when it leaves the oven.