Victorian Eggs A La Suisse
By: Vintage Cookboo...
Published: Sunday, February 28, 2010 - 1:34pm

Ingredients




2 ounces butter
3 ounces gruyere, thinly sliced
8 eggs
1/4 pint double (heavy) cream
2 ounces grated cheddar
salt 

black pepper

nutmeg

Preparation

1 Spread the bottom of a silver dish with two ounces of fresh butter 2 Cover this with rather thin slices of fresh Gruyère or any other cheese 3 Break eight whole eggs upon the cheese without disturbing the yolks. 4 Season with grated nutmeg, black pepper, and salt 5 Pour a quarter of a pint of double cream on the surface 6 Strew the top with about 2 ounces of grated cheese 7 Set the eggs in the oven to bake for about ten minutes 8 Place under grill until brown 9 Serve with strips of very thin dry toast separate on a plate.

About


This comes from the oldest of my cookbooks – a recent score from Help The Aged. It’s C.E Francatelli’s Cook’s Guide, first published by Richard Bentley of London in 1860 (as far as I can tell), and this edition is from 1864. Part of me is incredulous  that I would find a  145 year old book for £1.50, but it appears I did. It’s a fascinating read, the vast majority of the dishes look like they would be pretty hard to make, for want of obscure or obsolete cuts of meat, brands of seasoning or kitchen equipment.  The end of the book does have a series of adverts, including one for Adams and Son, Kitchen Outfitters of Haymarket, and one for Crosse and Blackwell (‘Purveyors in Ordinary to Her Majesty’), both merchants advertising a staggering array of goods unfamiliar to modern cooks 
I was expecting this to be inedible as it is incredibly rich, but it was rather nice. Admittedly I could only eat a small portion before starting to feel queasy and I’m not sure I can face the other three quarters of the dish that’s leftover, but the cream works nicely with the albumen, the yolk firms up nicely, and the Gruyère is vaguely chewy on the bottom and the cheese on top crisps up like sugar on a crème brûlée. It occurs to me that that’s a fairly accurate description of the dish – savoury crème brûlée. With a fried egg in it.