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Shirred Eggs, Luneville
Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes and evenly sprinkle over them one teaspoon freshly chopped chives, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish, season equally with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, pour a tablespoon good cream over each dish, set in oven for five minutes, remove, and immediately send to the table.
A plain baked-egg dish that depends entirely on timing and on the dish it is cooked in. Two details in the original will mislead a modern cook: the vessel and the five minutes.
- The hinge: five minutes is not enoughThe hinge: five minutes is likely to be short in a modern oven -- Filippini was writing for a coal range, and the recipe gives no oven heat, so the timing cannot be reconstructed directly. In a cold ceramic ramekin at 400F, two eggs need roughly 8 to 12 minutes to set the whites while the yolks stay loose. Judge by the white, not the clock, and pull them while the centres still tremble; they carry on cooking in the hot dish on the way to the table.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall shallow individual dishes with sloping sides, in glazed earthenware or tinned metal, holding about a cup. A 4-inch gratin dish, a cocotte or a wide ramekin all work. Depth is the enemy: a deep, narrow dish leaves the whites raw under set yolks.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Use 400F. Buttering the dish and warming it briefly before the eggs go in helps the whites set from below.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is usually reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon, though the measure was never standardised, so two saltspoons is roughly half a teaspoon of pepper. Since the recipe says to 'season equally', the half teaspoon of salt and the pepper appear to be totals for all six dishes rather than per dish, which works out to a scant pinch each.
- CreamA tablespoon per dish of something with real fat in it, at least 30 per cent. Half-and-half or milk will thin out and weep around the whites.
- ChivesOne teaspoon divided among six dishes is a whisper; a teaspoon per dish gives a flavour you can actually taste. Chives should go in raw and fresh; dried chives contribute nothing here.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each, meant as a breakfast or light supper dish with bread or toast. The yolks stay soft by design; anyone avoiding lightly cooked eggs should use pasteurized shell eggs or choose another preparation.
Shirred eggs are often said to take their English name from the shallow dish they are baked in, though the origin of the word is not settled; the French equivalent, oeufs sur le plat, says the same thing more directly: eggs on the plate, cooked and served in one vessel. Lunéville is a town in Lorraine, best known for its faience pottery. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with what appear to be several hundred such short place-named formulas, and the pattern here is typical of the genre. Two eggs, a fat, a seasoning, and a garnish. Whether the attribution reflects any actual practice in Lunéville or simply a restaurant kitchen's habit of labelling variations after towns is impossible to say, and the latter was common enough in the period to be the safer assumption.