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Shirred Eggs, Demi-Deuil
Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes, then crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Pour a tablespoon fresh cream over the eggs in each dish. Evenly season them with half teaspoon salt and three saltspoon white pepper. Sprinkle a small, finely chopped truffle over them, then set in the oven for five minutes. Remove and serve.
A straightforward French egg dish whose only real difficulties are the vessel, the missing oven temperature, and a cooking time that will not do the job in most modern ovens.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are individual shallow ceramic or metal dishes, roughly four to five inches across, sometimes sold as egg shirrers or oeuf dishes. Small gratin dishes or wide ramekins work; avoid anything deep, which steams the whites instead of setting them.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, as was usual in 1906. A moderate oven, 350F, suits shirred eggs; some cooks go to 375F for a faster set on the white.
- The five minutesFive minutes at 350F is likely to leave the whites slack unless the dishes were warmed on the stovetop first, a technique sometimes used for shirred eggs. Expect 8 to 12 minutes, and judge by the white: set and opaque, yolk still liquid.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper. Divided among six dishes that is generous but not wrong; the half teaspoon of salt is likewise for the whole batch.
- The creamA tablespoon of cream per dish should go over the eggs, not under them, or it insulates the base and slows the set. Heavy cream holds better than light under oven heat.
- TrufflesFresh black winter truffle is the intent. Preserved truffle in a jar is the practical substitute and should be added in the last two minutes, since its aroma is volatile. Truffle oil is a different flavor entirely and will not give the black-on-white contrast the dish is named for.
- YieldSix dishes, two eggs each: six servings as a first course or light lunch. Serve immediately, as the residual heat of the dish keeps cooking the eggs at the table.
Demi-deuil means "half mourning" — the black of sliced or chopped truffle set against something white, in this case the cooked egg. The name belongs to a small family of French dishes built on that contrast, the best known being poularde demi-deuil, a poached hen with truffle slices slipped under the skin, generally associated with the cooking of Lyon and the city's mères. Filippini's International Cook Book collected such things for American households and hotel kitchens in the first decade of the twentieth century, when black truffle was expensive but far from unobtainable in a well-supplied city, and when shirred eggs were standard breakfast and supper fare rather than a restaurant flourish. The recipe's brevity is typical of the book: it assumes a cook who already knows what a shirred-egg dish looks like and how hot the range is running.