French-style “Fried” Eggs

Most ways the French cook eggs can’t be translated exactly into English. What they call a fried egg (an oeuf frit) is a deep-fried egg, plunged in hot oil; the white is spooned up around the yolk as the oil bubbles furiously, enclosing the still-runny yolk in a brown crispy crust. I prefer the American method of “frying,” more accurately called panfrying. In panfrying we cook the eggs in a small amount of butter or oil, a technique the French call cooking à la poêle (loosely translated as “cooking in a frying pan”) or cooking “à l’américaine” Apparently the bare-bones simplicity of cooking an egg in a little butter in a frying pan doesn’t appeal to the French, who have developed their own method, endlessly variable, called sur le plat An oeuf sur le plat is an egg (or often two) cracked into a buttered round dish—I use individual round porcelain dishes like those used for making crème brûlée—and then baked in a preheated oven until the white sets and the yolk stays runny, just like an American fried egg. But unlike American fried eggs, French recipes include an infinity of variations, accomplished by putting various garnitures in the dishes before cracking the eggs over them, and assorted sauces over the eggs once they’re in the dishes. In many ways an egg sur le plat is like an oeuf en cocotte—many of the same variations can come into play—except that an oeuf sur le plat spreads out over the dish (like an American fried egg) instead of being held, custardlike, in a ramekin.