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Baked Eggs
For each person, allow two tablespoonfuls each of rich cream and fine bread crumbs, one-half of a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, a dash of salt and white pepper and one egg. Butter individual baking dishes, mix together the crumbs, cream and seasoning and put one-half of it in the dishes. Into each dish carefully break the egg, cover with the remainder of the bread mixture and place in a hot oven until the eggs are set.
A per-person formula rather than a fixed yield: multiply everything by the number at the table. The only real decision is when to pull the dishes out.
- "A hot oven"In turn-of-the-century terms usually somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat individual dishes will take roughly 10-15 minutes, depending on the dish; the crumb layer browns while the yolk is still soft.
- Individual baking dishesRamekins or cocottes of 4-6 oz. Anything wider spreads the egg thin and it sets before the crumbs colour. Set them on a sheet pan for easy handling.
- Judging "until the eggs are set"Carryover cooking is the hinge here. Take them out when the white is just opaque and the centre still trembles under the crumbs; they firm up in the hot dish over the next minute or two. Waiting for a fully firm yolk in the oven gives you a rubbery, weeping egg.
- Bread crumbsThe recipe says only "fine bread crumbs," which in period usage could mean either fresh or dried and sifted. Fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf stay looser and buttery; the sandy dried kind sold in canisters absorb the cream and can go pasty.
- Cream"rich cream" of the period was not a standardised grade, but it points to something richer than table cream; modern heavy cream is the closest common substitute. Half-and-half works but the mixture is looser and more likely to curdle at the edges.
- White pepperLikely chosen so that dark flecks would not show in a pale dish, a common convention in cookery of the period. Black pepper will do, with a slightly different flavour and visible specks.
- Quantities per servingTwo tablespoons each of cream and crumbs, half a teaspoon of parsley, one egg. Two dishes per person makes a more substantial breakfast; one is a light course.
- A gentler optionIf your oven runs hot or uneven, stand the dishes in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up their sides. The eggs set more slowly and evenly, though the crumb top browns less.
Baked or shirred eggs belong to the era of the large cooked breakfast, when a household with a range already fired for the morning could send several small dishes to the table at once, each one both a cooking vessel and a serving vessel. The French term oeufs en cocotte takes its name from the little pot the eggs are cooked in; American books of this period commonly said simply "baked eggs" and assumed the reader owned a set of small china or earthenware dishes. The bread-crumb-and-cream jacket does double duty: it buffers the egg from the direct heat of the oven and it stretches a single egg into something closer to a course. Recipes given per person, as this one is, are a familiar pattern in household manuals of the period, where the cook was expected to scale for a variable number at the breakfast table rather than work from a fixed yield.