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Tartlet of Eggs
Prepare six tartlet crusts, neatly wipe insides without removing from moulds, then carefully crack one fresh egg into each crust. Season the eggs evenly with three saltspoons salt, two saltspoons white pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg, pour a tablespoon cream over each egg, set in oven for four minutes, remove, carefully lift tartlets from mould, dress on dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A six-portion egg course from the era of blind-baked tartlet shells and napkin service. The whole thing hinges on the crust being fully cooked before the egg goes in, because the egg needs only a few minutes.
- Blind-bake firstThe recipe assumes the six tartlet crusts are already baked through and still in their moulds. If the pastry is raw when the egg goes in, four minutes will leave you with wet dough under set egg. Bake the shells empty, cool slightly, then fill.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning is about 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white pepper and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg spread across six eggs — the pepper is assertive by modern standards, and worth halving if white pepper is not to your taste.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, which was normal. Four minutes implies a hot oven; something in the region of 425-450F is a reasonable modern reading, though the original gives no guidance. Timing will vary, so check at four minutes and keep going if the white is still translucent.
- DonenessThe dish is meant to come out with a soft, barely-set yolk, closer to a shirred egg than a quiche. If you want the yolk firm, the white will overcook and turn rubbery, so accept the soft yolk or choose another preparation. Anyone avoiding undercooked egg should use pasteurised eggs.
- CreamA tablespoon per egg is a lot of liquid in a small shell. Use heavy cream, not milk or half-and-half; thinner dairy will not thicken in the time given and will pool in the pastry.
- UnmouldingLet them stand a minute out of the oven before lifting. Moving a tartlet with a liquid yolk straight from the heat is how the yolk breaks and runs into the pastry.
- The napkin"Dress on dish with a folded napkin" means a folded linen napkin laid on the serving platter, which absorbs steam and stops the tartlets sliding. It is a service instruction, not a cooking one, and can be skipped.
- YieldSix tartlets, one egg each — a luncheon or breakfast course for six, or three servings if you allow two apiece.
This is one of the short egg entries from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), the work of a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like what it is: a line-cook's memorandum rather than a teaching recipe. Filippini assumes the reader has baked tartlet shells to hand, knows what heat the range is at, and understands that eggs are served in pastry because pastry makes a plain egg into a course. The individual egg baked in a small vessel — oeuf en cocotte, shirred egg, egg in a tartlet — was a fixture of hotel and restaurant breakfast and luncheon menus in the period, useful precisely because it could be assembled in advance and finished in minutes to order. The folded napkin on the platter is the giveaway of the era's dining-room conventions, where the mechanics of service were specified as carefully as the cooking.