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Shirred Eggs, English Style
Cut from lean bacon six very thin slices, then cut each slice in two crosswise. Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes, heat them on range, then arrange two pieces of the bacon in each dish and fry them for two minutes on each side. Carefully crack two fresh eggs in each dish, evenly season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, lightly baste the yolks with a very little melted butter, set them in a very hot oven for three minutes, remove and serve.
A dish of individual baked eggs, sized here for six people. Two details need translating: the vessels and the oven.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall shallow ovenproof dishes with a flat bottom and low sides — a 5-inch cast-iron egg pan, an individual gratin dish or a wide ramekin all work. They must be able to go on direct heat as well as into the oven, since the bacon is fried in them.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper. The half teaspoon of salt and the pepper are the total for all six dishes, not per dish — divide them out.
- A very hot oven450–475F. Preheat fully; the whole point of the short time in the oven is that the dishes are already hot from the range and the heat is fierce.
- Three minutes is optimisticTwelve eggs may not set in three minutes in many home ovens, even with the dishes already hot from the range. Be prepared to give them longer, and judge by the whites: they should be opaque and just firm at the edge with the yolks still fluid. Pull them a shade early, as the hot dishes keep cooking at the table.
- The buttered yolksThe little brushing of melted butter over the yolks is the instruction that matters. It helps keep them from drying into a dull skin in the fierce oven heat, and it is the difference between a glossy yolk and a chalky one.
- The bacon"Lean bacon" here most likely means simply slices with more meat than fat, cut very thin; the "English style" label attaches to the dish as a whole rather than specifying a particular cut. Two minutes a side over moderate heat is enough to render and colour it without making it brittle; with very fatty bacon, pour off most of the fat before adding the eggs.
- Yield and serviceSix servings of two eggs. Serve in the cooking dishes on plates or folded napkins — they are extremely hot — with toast. Soft yolks mean this is best avoided by anyone who should not eat undercooked eggs.
Alexander Filippini, longtime chef at Delmonico's in New York, built The International Cook Book around national labels of exactly this kind, and "English style" here means little more than the bacon. The origin of shirred in this sense is obscure; the popular derivation from the name of the dish the eggs were baked in is traditional rather than established. The French called much the same preparation œufs sur le plat — eggs on the plate — and the technique suits the era of the coal range, when a cook could set an iron dish on the hot top to fry the bacon and then move it straight into the oven for a blast of heat. Individual dishes of this kind were used in hotel and restaurant breakfast service, where something that cooked in minutes and arrived still sizzling repaid the extra washing-up.