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Shirred Eggs with Truffles
Finely slice a medium truffle, place in small saucepan with a tablespoon each sherry and demi-glace add half saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix well and let boil three minutes. Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes, crack two fresh eggs into each dish, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper evenly divided, set eggs in oven for five minutes, remove, evenly divide truffles over and serve.
A luxury breakfast dish that depends on two things the original leaves unstated: the oven temperature and how firm you want the whites. Everything else is a matter of translating old measuring spoons.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So half a saltspoon of cayenne is an eighth of a teaspoon, and two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon in all, roughly a twelfth of a teaspoon in each of the six dishes.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because coal ranges did not have numbers. Shirred eggs want a moderate oven, 350–375F; hotter than that and the whites toughen and blister before the yolks set.
- Five minutes is a starting pointFive minutes in a modern oven gives barely set whites and liquid yolks. Eggs that reach a firm white and a thickened yolk usually need 10–14 minutes depending on the dish, and the residual heat of the crockery keeps cooking them after they come out. Take them a shade under.
- Shirred-egg dishesSmall, shallow, individual heatproof dishes — what a French kitchen calls a plat à oeufs. Ramekins, small gratin dishes or a 4-inch cast-iron pan all work. Warm them in the oven before buttering so the whites begin to set on contact.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thick enough to coat a spoon and intensely savoury. A tablespoon of good jarred demi-glace or a very reduced homemade brown stock does the job; a stock cube dissolved in water will not, since the point is body as much as flavour.
- The truffleA medium black winter truffle is roughly 30-40 g. The three-minute boil in sherry and demi-glace carries the truffle's aroma into the sauce. Preserved truffles in tins are the practical option; truffle oil is a different product and behaves differently, being all top note and no substance.
- YieldSix dishes, two eggs each — twelve eggs, six servings as a breakfast or light supper course.
"Shirred" is an American word for what French kitchens call oeufs sur le plat: eggs baked in the small individual dish they are served from, so the whites set gently against warm crockery rather than against a hot pan. Dishes of this stamp — a few luxurious spoonfuls of something over an otherwise plain preparation — appear on American hotel breakfast cards at the turn of the twentieth century. Truffles, sherry and demi-glace all belonged to the professional kitchen's stock of finishing touches; a cook with a stockpot already reducing on the range could dress a pair of eggs into a first-class dish quickly, which is the economy the recipe assumes.