When Jody said, “Hey let’s do Shirred Eggs with Spinach, Mushrooms and Toast Soldiers,”* I responded with an enthusiastic, “Huh?” Something stirred in the part of my brain where meal descriptions from Dickens and Wilkie Collins rattle around with episodes of Jewel in the Crown and Downton Abbey, reasonably accurate associations because Googling shirred eggs brings up the original 1896 edition of Fanny Farmer. She explains that “shirred eggs” derives from the dish used in the preparation, an egg-shirrer, a shallow gratin dish for baking the eggs. Did you catch that? …for baking the eggs.
That’s it, the whole circus? I mean, shirred means baked?
[WARNING: Language geek paragraph coming up.]
The Victorians were obsessively specific about nomenclature. If you don’t believe me, scroll through your vocabulary and gather all the unusual and strange words. Cross out the foreign imports like weltschmerz and cri de coeur, Shakespearean bonbons like bodkin (dagger), dispatch (kill) and methinks (methinks) and I’ll give you the first rubber of whist that everything left on the list is something you picked from reading a Victorian novel. Where else will you find eleemosynary (having to do with charity or charitable institutions), and reticule (a woman’s small net handbag); characters who remonstrate (argue) with each other, seek redress (compensation for having been wronged), and cast aspersions (maligning someone’s reputation) on one another, probably over who first gave the ague (fever), or worse, to whom. These words are in their dotage today, but they were once young and commonplace. Would you remonstrate with the waiter over your shirred eggs simply being called baked, or would you immediately call for the manager (excuse me, maître d’hôtel or other restaurant factotum) and demand redress?
Shirred egg recipes often include bread crumbs, as in Fanny Farmer’s recipe, which instructs the reader to line the shirrer with toasted and buttered breadcrumbs, add the eggs, top with more breadcrumbs, and then bake. Shirred is now promiscuously applied to eggs baked or broiled in any shallow dish. Depending on whom you consult, this may or may not include the French oefs en cocotte, eggs baked in shallow ramekins while sitting in a water bath. Purists pooh-pooh such Gallic fripperies. Shirred eggs just bake or broil, as the case may be.
We used little cast-iron boats for this recipe, but any shallow individual baking dish will do. Since the eggs are broiled, the emphasis here is on shallow (and, er, heatproof). In the interests of restraint, we used one egg per serving, but you can easily add another, if you have a leviathan (whale, thank you, Moby Dick) of an appetite. Enjoy. Ken
*She really talks like that. It comes from years of writing menus.
Shirred Eggs with Spinach, Mushrooms
and Toast Soldiers
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ¼ pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced as thin as possible
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 shallots, minced
- 4 ounces flat-leaf spinach, trimmed of thick stems, washed and dried, chopped
- ¼ teaspoon chopped tarragon
- ¼ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
- 4 large farm eggs, at room temperature
- 4 teaspoons crème fraîche
- Truffle salt if you can get it
Directions:
- Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a large sauté pan over medium high heat. As soon as the butter stops foaming, add the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and cook until they have released their juices and start to brown, about 3 minutes. They will shrink down to a quarter of the volume. Transfer to a bowl.
- Lower the heat to medium, then add the remaining tablespoon of butter and the shallots to the pan. Cook until they soften, about a minute. Add the spinach, stir until it wilts, about 1 minute. Return the mushrooms to the pan and cook until most of the moisture has evaporated and the spinach is meltingly tender. Stir in the tarragon and lemon zest.
- Distribute the mixture evenly in a smooth flat layer among 4 small shallow gratin dishes. Make a well in the center to hold the yolk.
- Set the rack on the second rung of the oven so it sits about 4 inches from the top. Turn on the broiler.
- Crack 1 egg into each dish. Wiggle it around a bit so the yolk fits in the well and the white is spread evenly over the mushroom mixture. If you don’t make the well, the yolk will sit up too high and get overcooked before the whites are done.
- Cook under the broiler for 30 seconds or until the whites just begin to set.
- Season the tops of the eggs with salt and pepper. Top each egg with a teaspoon of crème fraîche and run under the broiler for another minute or so, basting the yolk half way through with the crème fraîche. This happens quickly so take care not to overcook the eggs.
- Let sit 2 minutes to allow the egg to finish cooking. Serve with toast soldiers.
Toast Soldiers
Ingredients:
- 4 slices brioche or other breakfast bread, sliced 3/4-inch thick
Directions:
- Toast the bread. Spread with soft butter. We like to use goat butter. Cut off the crusts and then cut each slice into 4 soldiers. Stack the soldiers like Lincoln Logs and keep warm at the back of the stove while you cook the eggs.
- Encourage people to dip the soldiers into the yolks, making a gooey mess.
Jody Notes:
These are so easy to make it feels like cheating. The simplest variation: rub a small gratin dish with a teaspoon of butter. Break an egg into the dish. Run under the broiler for a minute or so. Baste with more butter. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.
I’m not a purist, but I do feel a little guilty about adding the spinach and mushrooms to this perfect dish. However, it does demonstrate how versatile shirred eggs are. They can be served for breakfast, lunch or a light supper, and you can combine them with different ingredients, as long as you pick things with a relatively delicate flavor and texture. That’s why I say to slice the mushrooms as thinly as possible; to chop the spinach and to cook until meltingly tender. Many years ago, in the South of France, we were served a lunch of shirred eggs in tomato sauce, along with a green salad. Because the tomato sauce was light, the dish worked.
This technique is perfect for holiday entertaining. Fill the gratin dishes with the mushroom mixture and have them at room temperature. Just before serving, preheat the broiler, make the toasts and then crack the eggs into the dishes and broil. Serve the hot dishes on an underliner.
ALTERNATIVE: If broiling makes you afraid that you’re going to get tough egg whites or overcook the yolks, an alternative technique is to bake them for 5 minutes on the center rack of a preheated 500°F oven, adding the crème fraîche halfway through.
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The Garum Factory 
I really have no idea why, but i think this would be delicious.
Then you should try it! Ken
I enjoyed reading this so much! Philology, history and cuisinology together in one post? Love it. Also, I am an egg fanatic, and though I love “oeufs en cocotte”, I never can be bothered with the whole water bath process (I must be too impatient). A baked version works much better for me, and this sounds and looks delicious. Thank you!
Somebody forgot to lock the mental barn door and all of the animals wandered out. By the time I figured out what was going on it was too late. Ken
A prefect dish for Christmas morning…simple to make but a little special at the same time.
Thank you – and that’s when we’re doing it too (there’s something about crême fraîche and Christmas). Thanks for the comment. Happy holidays! Ken
First, LOVE Wilkie Collins. And, I’ll join you in a game of whist one evening – count on it.
Second, sounds delicious, as usual. Karen, I think you’re right – sounds wonderful for a Christmas morning, if I didn’t already have my candied-ginger and cranberry scones with grapefruit mimosas tradition : ) Perhaps this could be a new New Year’s tradition – the eggs and toast could sop up the possible hangover.
Another lover of Victorian narrative, welcome! (My favorite period of English lit–and Dickens is a god.) Check out next week’s post for something to consume while sitting in front of the fire reading THE MOONSTONE. For a hangover I’d recommend last year’s Vuelva à la Vida (http://wp.me/p1t5xh-t3)–lots of healthy stuff mixed with a hair of the dog that bit you. Still, grapefruit mimosas and scones, sounds like you’ve got things under control. Grapefruit sound way better with champagne than oj. Ken
Got to try this tomorrow
Baked or broiled? Let us know how it goes. Ken
Another linguistic feast, as well as a culinary one. I’m surprised you didn’t have some fun with “toast soldiers.” Where did that term originate? Happy holidays, may yours be as warm and satisfying as shirred eggs. (I like my eggs, though not always my kids, coddled).
I always thought it was from Humpty Dumpty–the toast “soldiers” came to clean up the mess after he fell off the wall–but there are so many references to “soldier” in English, and in the larger Victorian culture, which seems natural given that Great Britain was an empire that just their straight-edged appearance may have led to the name. Funny you should mention coddled eggs–one of the ways of “coddling” an egg is to cook it in a ramekin in a water bath in a covered pot on top of the stove. This is the way I ate eggs as a kid and it wasn’t until I got to college that I found out the “poached” eggs I’d been eating were actually coddled, and that real poached eggs involved a daring technique of lowering a raw egg, sans shell, into pot of just-below-boiling water. Ken
I’m sorry you were the product of “egg-confusion,” but you seem to have soldiered on in spite of it :).
Haha! I get the yolk! Ken
I love shirred eggs. So great to do when feeding a crowd for breakfast, and your combination looks great. Hope you have a lovely holiday.
And you too! May you have a mild Christmas–we’re looking for snow, but not too much. Ken
Reblogged this on Urban Farm Foodista.
Thank you! Happy holidays! Ken
Sounds totally divine and loved the informative write up. Excuse my ignorance but what it to broil? Is it the same as grilling? I never hear that term in the UK but often read about it on US blogs. Cheers Torie
Not sure if UK grilling is the same as American grilling (which usually implies quick cooking on a metal grate with wood, charcoal or gas beneath as the heat source. American grills are usually–though not always–portable, and the cooking is done out of doors). The iconic American “backyard grill” is shaped like a kettle, and some people mistakenly call it a barbecue.
Broiling, by contrast is done in a regular kitchen inside an oven. Most gas-fueled American ovens have an broiler either in the roof of the oven, or in a separate compartment below the main oven. An exposed tube runs from front to back and is perforated with holes in arrayed in two lines on either side of the tube. During broiling a valve opens in the tube, gas flows into it and the ignited gas spreads in flames on either side of the tube. If you’ve ever seen a gas grill, the principle is the same, except it’s upside down. Generally the rack below the broiler is adjusted so the cooking surface of the food is within a few inches of the broiler flames. Like outdoors grilling, broiling is most successful with food that cooks quickly at a high temperature. Broiling also allows quick cooking of food that needs to be held in a container (e.g. eggs, cheese), since the heat is applied from above. In grilling the heat is typically applied from below (except in restaurant grill racks, where the heat source, called a salamander, sits above the food), and usually pertains to foods that have the structural integrity to sit on the grill rack without external support.
If UK grilling and American broiling are the same, please excuse the tedious explanation of the obvious. Some high-end American stovetops now offer the option of a gas grill, along with the regular burners. Merry Christmas! Are you eating thousand-year-old eggs for our holiday dinner? Ken
Wow that is some explanation. Ok I definitely don’t have a broiler then only and oven/with grill (different from a broiler) and a separate steamer oven. I can do this recipe by simply baking then. Yes will have to hunt out those thousand-year-old eggs for sure. Have a good Christmas and thanks for the explanation. Best Torie
love eggs…this looks amazing
Just the ticket for an early morning breakfast after returning from dawn fly-fishing. :-) Merry Christmas! Ken
No doubt!!!! or before going, but then I may need a nap. Merry Christmas to you as well.
Language geek, indeed. Love these eggs, and have just the little cast iron pan to make them in. Hope you are all having a fabulous holiday season!
Steve–I must have missed your comment on the first go round. Thanks for reading through the entire language geek post. Hope those little cast-iron pans worked out for you. Happy New Year and best of blogging in 2013. Ken
T_T – I searched and found it. Thanks for the post. Kate Beek
Glad to hear it! I hope it came out all right. Please excuse my tardiness in responding. Our spam filter mistakenly caught you in its clutches. Ken
Everything about this post is the reason I started food blogging myself this past week. The photos are incredible, the food looks fantastic and the words seem like something my brain would process the very same way! I look forward to following future recipes and posts!
Great! Thanks for stopping by. Ken
Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to mention that
I’ve truly loved surfing around your weblog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!
Hi, Dorothy–Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I’m glad you’ve discovered us! We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week. Thanks for subscribing. Ken