I don't know, but I'm interested in trying out long cooked eggs. I'm thinking sous vide. :)

Very interesting, plllog. Yeah, that's the color that regular shell-roasted eggs get, too. But these were white. I realize I mistyped above. Yolks were yellow, of course, but the whites were white with some browned spots on them.

Fascinating article, I'm intrigued! I might try one or two out in my instant pot with a 30 min set time. Just afraid of them blowing up!

I would also agree and say sous vide cooked eggs then placed under a salamander to brown.

I did a ton of reading about sous vide eggs after trying Starbucks egg quiches which were incredibly silky and delicious.

Yeah, W, that's the picture I got no matter what you typed. :) I've never seen anything quite like that. It's the egg shaped that's the kicker. So, my mother used to do that for the seder plate, shell an egg then roast it with the meat so it would look roasty but still egg shaped, but those were just overcooked eggs, and she'd forget sometimes and have it blow up all over the oven. By the time I was ten, she used drippings to "decorate" and left the egg in the shell. :)

Now that I've remembered that, maybe I have a few guesses? The secret to the long cooked eggs is low temperature. Eggs at 350° blow up by the time they come up to oven temperature. So, parboil some eggs until the white is set, at least, and cook at a low temperature until one starts to look right, and try it. Leave the others go until the appearance alters and try another, etc. Maybe under a broiler if yours will go down to a low enough temperature, or bake low (or sous vide) until you think it's cooked enough and hit with a high broiler or torch. Keep a jar of mustard mornay for the samplings.

Since you haven't found a recipe, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something the chef just did because of the ingredients at hand. Maybe he didn't have the veg for a baked shakshuka (a form of which is very popular in Spain now, and given its age I'd guess back then too), so he figured he'd just bake the eggs and use a different sauce.

It's the egg shaped that's the kicker.

Yeah. I've seen plenty of roasted eggs that looked kind of like them, except that they were all a bit deflated-looking, and most of them had set yolks.

Did they do sous vide back in 1970?

I was thinking about how you could handle them now, but apparently they've been doing sous vide for centuries, though the part with the temperature regulator obviously came in the 20th century. That's why I was thinking something along the line of soft boiled so the shape would be right and the yolk soft. i remember eggs from my childhood which could be peeled when soft boiled and hold their shape. The eggs I get now are even hard to peel fully cooked. Or maybe they had an egg shaped mold to cook it in? Or maybe it was poached eggs placed in an egg shaped pan to brown under a broiler/salamander?

Or maybe they had an egg shaped mold to cook it in? Or maybe it was poached eggs placed in an egg shaped pan to brown under a broiler/salamander?

Mmmmaybe, but there were nearly fifty of us who were all served the same thing at the same time. (Students and faculty on tour to study El Greco)

Hm... Sous vide and a torch it is!

Hmm, that sounds very plausible, cleo7. Thanks!

I have a kitchen torch, but I'm too scared to use it. Maybe worth it for roasted eggs for 50? I wonder if there are fireproof cooking gloves (glass blower's mitts wouldn't be good)?

Ha, plllog, at the club my parents ran back in the late fifties they had a regular commercial blowtorch in the kitchen. I can still remember watching Betty and the giant torch finishing the coconut on the molded lamb-shaped cakes for Easter.

That sounds fab! So cool that your parents had a club back when clubs were cool.

I've used a proper acetylene torch for brazing brass armatures, but that was with the big mitts and helmet with mask. :) My kitchen torch just uses butane, but it's rated for over 2000° F. It's probably not that much as torches go, and if I cleared off the soapstone island I'd have a safe surface, but eek!

over 2000° F. It's probably not that much as torches go, and if I cleared off the soapstone island I'd have a safe surface, but eek!

Eek is right! I'm not that brave, either.

Thank-you, Writersblock!! You inspired me. I felt like such a wuss with my eek, even though you were kind enough to agree with me, especially given the soapstone, that I went on Amazon and got a flint spark torch igniter and a pair of suede welding gauntlets (sized women's small and which are almost small enough to be a good fit--definitely small enough to safely work in). They're also a most wonderful deep cobalt blue and just the color is enough to make one happy.

I'm still not ahem fired up enough to fill up the torch and flame it for giggles, but I think if I really wanted to use it, I would charge forward, gear up and get it done. People handle these things all the time with their bare hands, and I'm pretty sure there's a trigger igniter built into the torch, but I feel much more secure now. Thank-you!

Good for you, plllog! I so clearly remember the way the whole kitchen would go quiet when Betty pulled on her gauntlets. Everyone wanted to drop what they were doing to watch.