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Shirred Eggs, Kandy
Finely slice two medium-sized white onions. Have six shirred-egg dishes with a level teaspoon butter in each and thoroughly heat on the range. Evenly divide the onions into the six dishes and brown them to a nice colour, or about five minutes, turning with a fork once in a while. Sprinkle with a teaspoon curry powder, evenly divided; gently mix. Carefully break two fresh eggs in each dish. Season with a teaspoon salt and a third of a teaspoon white pepper, evenly divided.
Set dishes in a hot oven for three minutes, then remove. Peel three rips bananas and cut in four pieces lengthwise; lightly roll in flour, then fry in boiling fat or butter for one minute. Remove, drain on a towel, then arrange two strips around the side of each dish, ring-like, and serve.
A single-serving baked egg dish from the book's tour of world cities, and one where the stated oven time will not do the job. Read the timing note before you start.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are the shallow individual gratin dishes of about 5 inches across, oven- and stovetop-safe. Small cast-iron pans or metal-handled skillets work; thin porcelain ramekins will crack when set directly on a burner to brown the onions.
- "A hot oven"Around 425 to 450F. The dishes go in already hot from the range, so preheat the oven fully before you begin the onions.
- Three minutes is not enoughTwo eggs in a heated dish need roughly 8 to 12 minutes at 425F for the whites to set firm while the yolks stay soft. Judge by the whites: they should be opaque throughout with no clear liquid around the yolk. Pull them the moment that happens, since carryover heat in a hot metal dish keeps cooking them.
- "Rips bananas"A typesetter's error for ripe. Use bananas that are yellow and fragrant but still firm; fully spotted ones collapse in the fat. Firm plantain, cut the same way, holds its shape better, and plantain was and is widely cooked in Sri Lanka.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means hot deep fat, about 375F. One minute is right at that temperature, long enough to set the flour coating and colour it. In butter, use clarified butter or the milk solids will burn before the banana browns.
- Curry powderA teaspoon divided across six dishes is a whisper. Commercial curry powders of the period were generally mild and turmeric-heavy; if you are using a fresh, assertive one, keep to the stated amount, and bloom it in the buttery onions for 20 to 30 seconds so it loses its raw edge.
- Seasoning by the dishA teaspoon of salt across twelve eggs is about right. The recipe salts after the eggs go in; if you prefer, salt the onions instead, as salt sitting on raw egg is often said to leave pale spots.
- Yield and servingSix dishes, two eggs each, meant as a breakfast or luncheon course. Serve in the cooking dish on a plate, with the fried banana arranged last so it stays crisp.
Filippini's International Cook Book arranges hundreds of dishes by place name, and Kandy — the hill capital of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and in 1906 a British colonial administrative and tea centre — earns its entry here through three signals a Western reader of the period would have recognised as Ceylonese: curry powder, onions cooked down in butter, and fried banana. The dish itself is a European construction, shirred eggs being a standard hotel-kitchen format, dressed in what the book treats as local colour rather than a recipe carried back from a Kandyan household. Fried ripe plantain or banana as an accompaniment to rice and curry is genuine to the region and to much of South and Southeast Asia; the curry powder is the giveaway of the colonial kitchen, since a Sri Lankan cook would have roasted and ground her own spices to a blend particular to the dish rather than reaching for a single all-purpose tin.