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Shirred Eggs, Reine
Cut six very thin slices of galantine and place a slice at bottom of six lightly buttered shirred-egg dishes. Place on range two minutes, turn slices over, then pour teaspoon sherry over each slice. Crack two fresh eggs over each dish. Season eggs evenly with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper; pour a gill sweet cream evenly over the eggs of the six dishes, then set in oven for three minutes, remove and serve.
A straightforward baked-egg dish whose only real difficulty is that the original assumes a coal range and a set of shallow egg dishes. The timings need adjusting for a modern oven.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so 1/2 cup of cream divided among six dishes — a scant 4 teaspoons each. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons roughly 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper across the whole batch.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese were shallow individual porcelain or metal gratin dishes, usually 4 to 5 inches across, made to go on direct heat and then into the oven. Small cast-iron pans, ovenproof ramekins or a single wide gratin dish all work; anything deep will steam the eggs rather than set them.
- GalantineA boned, stuffed and poached meat — usually chicken or veal — pressed, chilled in its own jelly and sliced cold. It was a standard cold-larder item in a professional kitchen of this period. Any good sliced cooked chicken or veal loaf, or a coarse country pâté, stands in.
- "Place on range"This means setting the dishes directly over the burner to warm the meat and start the butter, not a preheating step. Two minutes over low heat is enough; the point is a warm dish so the whites set from below.
- Oven heat and the three minutesNo temperature is given, because the range gave what it gave. Shirred eggs want a fairly hot oven. Three minutes is likely to be too short in a modern home oven, so judge by eye rather than by the clock: the whites opaque and just firm at the edge, the yolks still liquid.
- The hinge: stop while the yolks are looseThe cream and the residual heat of the dish keep cooking the eggs after they leave the oven. Pull them when the whites are barely set; a minute too long gives you a chalky yolk and a rubbery white.
- SherryUse a dry amontillado or fino, not cream sherry or anything sold as cooking sherry. A teaspoon per dish is meant to perfume the meat.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each — twelve eggs in all. As written it is a breakfast or lunch dish; served with bread it needs nothing else.
Shirred eggs are the American name for what French kitchens called œufs sur le plat — eggs cooked and served in the same shallow dish, the whites set by heat from below and above rather than by turning. The suffix à la Reine was generally attached to dishes built on poultry, often enriched with cream. The recipe belongs to a hotel and restaurant tradition where a cold galantine sat ready in the larder and could be pressed into service at any meal; slicing it thin under a pair of eggs turns yesterday's cold buffet into a hot breakfast in five minutes.