With the price of eggs having made the news last month, this seems like a good time to review how to eat a soft-boiled egg from an egg cup. Scrambled, fried, and poached are more usual in America, but perhaps the soft-boiled egg will catch on again since there’s just one per serving. Etiquetteer demonstrates (with questionable skill) in the video above.
You’ll need an egg cup, a plate to serve it on, a knife, and a teaspoon (if you don’t have egg spoons — and who does?).
Once your egg is boiled to your satisfaction, place it in the egg cup with the pointed side down. Etiquetteer has to use tongs to get it from the pot to the cup it’s so hot. The pointed side goes down because you expose more egg at the top when you open it. Or the pointed side goes up because there might be an air pocket there, or because you prefer it that way. There’s no established rule. And they say there’s no freedom in good manners . . .
John Barrymore as Louis XV with soft-boiled egg and fork in Marie Antoinette (1938). Etiquetteer recalls his line “I pride myself I do it rather neatly.”
Holding the egg cup steady with your left hand, you may use either spoon or knife to open it up*. Tap the top of your egg with your teaspoon to crack it, and then the tip of your spoon to open it wide enough to get the spoon inside. Or, use the knife to lop off the top á la Louis XV, with a quick stroke. Of course he used a fork, which isn’t au courant in this century. Madame Campan describes the impression he made in her memoir of Marie Antoinette: “He was very expert in a number of trifling matters . . . for instance, he would knock off the top of an egg-shell at a single stroke of his fork; he therefore always ate eggs when he dined in public, and the Parisians who came on Sundays to see the King dine, returned home less struck with his fine figure than with the dexterity with which he broke his eggs.” Etiquetteer does not yet have the late King’s confidence in this procedure; it takes practice. One might also argue that any ostentation in table manners, even perfection, calls too much attention to oneself. Louis might have nurtured a better reputation had he concentrated on governing instead of dining.
Obviously the bits you whack off your egg go on your plate. Season with salt and pepper if you choose, then eat with a spoon or — a novelty to Etiquetteer — dip “fallen soldiers” into your egg, hot buttered toast cut into strips.
Etiquetteer wishes you a Perfectly Proper breakfast in congenial company.
The egg cup pattern is obviously upside down, but with an egg so small, what else is to be done? This is Dear Grandmother’s china, and as Mrs. Honeychurch said, “Please remember that your father bought the drawing room furniture and we must put up with it.”
*For the advanced foodie there are also egg scissors, but they look more like kitchen utensils than something to use in the dining room.