Parmentier Eggs

Œufs Parmentier (eggs baked in potato shells) teach one of the canon's most useful lessons: one ingredient can be both vessel and filling. The one true thing to know before you touch the oven is that the potatoes must bake completely through, dry and floury, because only then will their flesh pass through a sieve into a smooth purée while the skins remain strong enough to cradle the eggs.

The old kitchen needed neither a saucier nor a stockpot kept constantly on the fire for this dish, and its second cooking happened in the oven rather than under a salamander. What it did assume was a supply of evenly sized fine Dutch potatoes, an oval fancy-cutter, a sieve, and hands available to route the surplus purée elsewhere. Large floury baking potatoes are the honest home equivalent, chosen because their dry flesh sieves cleanly; a paring knife replaces the cutter, and a warm platter replaces the napkin. The cutter and napkin were service scaffolding, so they go. The sieving, the half-filled shell, the whole egg, the cream, and the second bake are the dish, so every one stays. One cook, one stove, one evening.

When the Œufs Parmentier are right, each crisp-skinned potato opens beneath its little lid to reveal ivory purée, a tender white, and a yolk that runs into the cream at the first spoonful. Give the potatoes their full first bake. Everything good in the dish follows from that dry, yielding flesh.