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Shirred Eggs with Sardines
Neatly skin, bone and cut in small pieces twelve small sardines. Evenly divide them in six shirred-egg dishes with their own oil poured over them; place on the fire for one minute, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish and season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper evenly divided. Set in the oven for three minutes, remove and serve.
A six-portion breakfast dish that depends entirely on preheated dishes and preheated oil; the original's three minutes only makes sense if everything is already hot.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are shallow individual heatproof dishes — the French plat a oeufs — small, with low sides. Small cast-iron skillets or shallow ramekins work; a deep ramekin steams the eggs rather than setting them from below.
- "Place on the fire for one minute"The dishes go directly on the stovetop to heat the sardine oil and start the base cooking before the eggs are added. Skip this and the whites will never set in the short oven time.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. The dish is clearly meant to set fast rather than bake slowly, which implies a hot oven; something in the region of 400-425F suits it.
- The timing is the weak pointThree minutes will not set two eggs unless dish and oil are genuinely sizzling. In a hot oven expect appreciably longer — several minutes more — for firm whites and soft yolks, and judge by the whites losing all translucency rather than by the clock.
- SardinesTwelve small sardines is roughly two standard tins packed in oil, depending on the size of the fish — two per dish. Most tins are sold skin-on and bone-in, though skinless, boneless versions exist; the soft spine is edible in any case, so the boning is largely cosmetic.
- SeasoningA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so this calls for a total of half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper across six dishes. Sardine oil and the fish itself are already salty; less salt is defensible.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each — a substantial breakfast or supper course. Serve in the cooking dishes with toast; transferring them out breaks the yolks.
- Soft yolksThe yolks stay liquid by design. Anyone advised against undercooked egg should use pasteurized eggs or cook until the yolks are firm.
Shirred eggs are the American name for what French kitchens call œufs sur le plat — eggs cooked and served in the same shallow dish, set by radiant heat rather than stirred or poached. The verb "shirr" is generally traced to the nineteenth century and its origin is genuinely obscure. The sardine version belongs to the same moment: canned Breton and Norwegian sardines had become an inexpensive, reliably available pantry item, and their packing oil was treated as an ingredient in its own right rather than something to be drained away. That thrift-plus-restaurant-technique combination is characteristic of the book's approach, which scales the dish down to six portions for a household cook.