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Eggs with Ham
(Uova al prosciutto) Place in a frying pan as many pieces of butter, large like a nut, as there are eggs to be cooked.
For each piece of butter put a little slice of ham and place the frying pan on the fire. As soon as the butter is melted break an egg on each slice of ham. Let cook for ten minutes on a moderate fire.
A one-pan dish that needs almost nothing translated, except the timing, which is the whole difficulty.
- Ten minutes is far too longOn any modern burner, an egg dropped onto a hot buttered slice of ham sets in three to four minutes, five if you want the yolk firm. A "moderate fire" on a solid-fuel range would have meant gentler, less even heat through a heavy pan. Cook over medium-low and judge by the white, not the clock.
- "Large like a nut"Read as a walnut-sized knob, that is roughly a tablespoon; the original does not say which nut. For four eggs that would be about four tablespoons, generous by current taste; two is plenty in a non-stick pan, more in cast iron or steel.
- Which prosciuttoProsciutto in an Italian kitchen covers both the raw cured ham and prosciutto cotto, the boiled one. Here the cooked kind behaves better: raw prosciutto crudo tightens, curls and turns salty and leathery under direct heat. If you use crudo, slice it thicker and keep the heat low.
- Pan sizeEach egg needs its own slice of ham sitting flat on the pan bottom, so the eggs do not run together. Four eggs want a 10- to 12-inch pan, or cook in batches.
- Basting instead of flippingThe recipe never turns the eggs, and it should not — the ham would come with them. Tilt the pan and spoon the hot butter over the whites, or cover the pan for the last minute to set the tops.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for, because the ham supplies it. Pepper at the table; salt only after tasting.
- YieldOne or two eggs and their slices of ham per person, with bread.
Uova al prosciutto belongs to the plainest end of the Italian repertoire — the sort of dish that appears in nineteenth-century household books not because it needs explaining but because a manual was expected to be complete. In the Italian order of a meal, eggs are generally treated as a secondo, a protein course following the pasta or soup, rather than a breakfast food, and a cook consulting this book would have read it as a light supper dish or a cheap substitute for meat. The pairing itself is older than any cookbook and turns up across Europe wherever cured pork and eggs are both at hand.