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Eggs (Piedmont style Chop anchovies)
(Piedmont style.) Chop 4 anchovies, and dissolve them, free from bones and skin, in 1/2 pint of good stock, add the yolks of 6 eggs and the beaten whites of 2, salt and pepper and parsley. Stir over the fire until smooth, pour over some slices of toast which have been laid in a dish, sprinkle some grated cheese over all, and bake ten minutes in a hot oven.
EGGS (as cooked in Sienna.).
Boil and slice 6 eggs, put them in a dish, sprinkle with grated cheese, then eggs, so on, until all the eggs are used, with 1/2 a pint of good white stock over all, and some cheese and breadcrumbs on top. Bake 10 minutes, and serve in the dish.
EGGS (as cooked in Malta.).
Mix on the fire 1 cup of white stock, 1 tablespoonful of grated ham, 1 ounce of butter, 1 ounce of grated cheese, juice of a lemon, salt, pepper, parsley, nutmeg, and 1/2 cup of stewed tomatoes. Stir 20 minutes, then strain it over a dish containing 6 hard-boiled and sliced eggs. Cover with bread-crumbs and cheese, and bake in a hot oven.
Three related dishes, all of them eggs baked briefly under cheese in a small amount of stock. The first is a savoury custard sauce, the other two are gratins of hard-boiled eggs; none takes more than about twenty minutes once the stock is to hand.
- Do not let the Piedmont mixture boilSix yolks plus two whites in a cup of stock is a custard, and it will scramble the moment it approaches simmering. Stir over gentle heat, or in a bowl over hot water, until it thickens to coating consistency, then pour it over the toast at once.
- Half a pintIf the measure is imperial, half a pint is 10 fl oz, a scant 1 1/4 US cups; a US half-pint of 8 oz works perfectly well and gives a slightly firmer set.
- A hot ovenRead this as roughly 425-450F. The ten minutes is only to gratinate the top and warm the dish through; the eggs are already cooked or nearly so, and longer will make them rubbery and weep liquid.
- AnchoviesThe instruction to free them of bones and skin points to whole cured anchovies rather than prepared fillets; rinse them, pull out the backbone, and mash them into warm (not boiling) stock with a fork until they break down. Modern oil-packed fillets need no boning and dissolve readily. Add no salt until you have tasted.
- Stock"Good stock" here means real, lightly gelatinous meat or veal stock, which is what gives the Sienna and Malta versions body as they bake. Thin commercial broth will pool in the dish; reduce it first if it is watery.
- The cheeseIn all three cases this is hard grating cheese, Parmesan or a dry pecorino. Grate it finely so it melts within the short baking time.
- Straining the Malta sauceTwenty minutes of stirring reduces and marries the ham, tomato and lemon; straining removes the ham shreds and parsley and leaves a smooth, sharp sauce. Skipping the strainer is defensible but makes a rougher dish.
- YieldEach version uses six eggs and serves three to four as a light supper or lunch dish. All three want bread alongside, and the Piedmont one is already sitting on it.
All three are recognisably Italian in method: eggs finished under grated cheese in a hot oven, and the Piedmontese use of anchovy dissolved into a warm liquid is the same instinct that produces bagna cauda in that region, where salt-cured anchovies travelled inland from the Ligurian coast and became a seasoning rather than a fish course. The Malta version, with its ham, tomato, lemon and nutmeg, reflects the island's position between Sicilian and British influences. None of the three is a documented traditional recipe with a fixed name.