Ox Eyes

The text breaks off mid-sentence, but the method is recognisable: rounds of stale bread with the centres punched out, dipped and fried, with an egg dropped into the hole. Fill in the missing steps from any egg-in-a-basket recipe.

• What the finished dish isWhat the finished dish appears to be -- the text stops before the method, but the ingredients point to a round of bread with a hole in the middle, browned in butter, with an egg broken into the opening and cooked until the white sets. The yolk in the bread is presumably the "ox eye" of the title.
• The breadStale bread is not a defect here but the requirement. Fresh crumb tears when you stamp it and turns to paste when it meets milk. Use a firm day-old white loaf cut a full three-quarters of an inch thick, as the recipe directs, and stamp rounds large enough to leave a frame once the centre is cut out.
• The milk dipThe milk in the ingredient list is presumably for a brief dip, the way you would wet bread for French toast, rather than a soaking; soaked bread will collapse in the pan.
• Pan and heatMedium heat and a generous amount of butter. Too hot and the bread is black before the egg white sets; too cool and the bread drinks the butter. Cover the pan for the last minute if the white on top is still translucent.
• Egg donenessThe yolk is traditionally left soft, which is the point of the presentation. Anyone who should avoid a runny yolk (pregnancy, small children, the immune-compromised) should cook it through or use pasteurised eggs.
• Do not waste the middlesFry the punched-out centres in the same butter and serve them alongside as sops, or toast them for crumbs.
• Seasoning and yieldThe recipe says only salt and pepper to taste. Reckon one or two rounds per person; the number a loaf yields depends on the size of your cutter.