An Egg Cooked in a Hole in a Slice of Bread

[Fat Guy]

I've found that an inverted glass only works well with soft, thin bread either from the supermarket bread shelf or crafted in that style (or brioche-type breads), not with most of the bread I eat, which tends to be fairly chewy sourdough, whole grain and bread of that sort, sliced thick. Bread like that, when you bear down on it with an inverted glass, you compress more than you cut. You've got to work on it with the tip of a knife, and that's harder to do if you've already buttered it.

[tino27]

I always knew this as 'Texas toast', I was born and raised in Cleveland...

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Kris ... was your family's version done with thick-ish bread that was completely square (as opposed to having a crown on a regular loaf of store bought bread)? Texas toast to me is the actual bread as opposed to the fact that it had an egg cooked in the middle.

Lots of places I remember growing up with used "Texas toast" style bread for things like grilled garlic bread and "French" toast. Of course, that may be the Bob Evan's background in me as well.

[slkinsey]

I call it egg in a basket. We cut the hole with a round cutter such as would be used for cutting biscuits (or as a mold for fancy plating). I don't pre-butter the toast, I butter the pan.

[Fat Guy]

Texas toast to me is the actual bread as opposed to the fact that it had an egg cooked in the middle.

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Right, I think of Texas toast as soft sandwich bread that's cut to a double thickness. It's something you see on supermarket shelves, though not necessarily in the Northeast. Secondarily, many restaurants use it to refer to griddled buttered bread.

I don't pre-butter the toast, I butter the pan.

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This is something I really need to get around to experimenting with. Without having done any side-by-side comparisons under controlled circumstances, I've long had the general, anecdotal, unsupported feeling that buttering the bread works better for, for example, grilled cheese sandwiches than buttering the pan does. I have no idea why that would be the case. If it does work better for grilled cheese, it probably works better for egg in a basket, I guess.

[cdh]

In my world such a thing is called a "spit-in-the-eye". Not at all an appetizing name, but what my mother and her mother have called it forever. The best part is the bread from the cut out hole, fried along side the main bit, used to dip in and get the egg yolk.

Usually served with scrapple.

I'm from agrarian stock who started in the Princeton NJ area long long ago and migrated as far westward as PA Dutch country.

Edited July 11, 2009 by cdh (log)

[David A. Goldfarb]

I always knew this as 'Texas toast', I was born and raised in Cleveland...

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East Side or West? Finally another Clevelander responds, and I'm still the only one who knows this as "Rocky Mountain toast" (East Side).

[Peter the eater]

Do most people cook the egg only on one side?

The flip is necessary, one ought not have bread toasted one side, never mind the egg.

[torakris]

I always knew this as 'Texas toast', I was born and raised in Cleveland...

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East Side or West? Finally another Clevelander responds, and I'm still the only one who knows this as "Rocky Mountain toast" (East Side).

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Eastsider here (Cleveland Heights), I never actually ate this at home only at girl scout camp and that is what everyone called it. It was just regular bread. Before I posted I googles Texas toast and was really surprised to see it was a kind of bread I had never heard of that bread before.

[haresfur]

What a great thread and great bunch of responses.

Another for "cowboy toast". From my DB - I never heard of it until I met her. She's from Michigan.

I just ate, and now I'm hungry again...

[sandra]

huevo en pan (egg in bread) in Mexico/South America

egg must be runny, cut the hole in the bread, fry the bread on one side, flip, crack the egg in and finish - the hole gets fried as well...

it's not just an American thing, I have had it in Europe as well

[David A. Goldfarb]

I always knew this as 'Texas toast', I was born and raised in Cleveland...

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East Side or West? Finally another Clevelander responds, and I'm still the only one who knows this as "Rocky Mountain toast" (East Side).

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Eastsider here (Cleveland Heights), I never actually ate this at home only at girl scout camp and that is what everyone called it. It was just regular bread. Before I posted I googles Texas toast and was really surprised to see it was a kind of bread I had never heard of that bread before.

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Must be a Girl Scout thing. My father always did most of the cooking at home, but this was one of the things my mother made, and she grew up in Beachwood. We moved around a bit when I was a kid, but we mostly lived in Lyndhurst (Ohio) when I was growing up.

[LaurieB]

Grew up in Ohio -- is this a regional thing?

I knew it as "Huevos al Nido" -- aka eggs in a nest. And, no, my family is not Hispanic.

This is one of my favorite breakfast dishes.

[JAZ]

This is something I really need to get around to experimenting with. Without having done any side-by-side comparisons under controlled circumstances, I've long had the general, anecdotal, unsupported feeling that buttering the bread works better for, for example, grilled cheese sandwiches than buttering the pan does. I have no idea why that would be the case. If it does work better for grilled cheese, it probably works better for egg in a basket, I guess.

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I have experimented. Spreading the butter definitely does work better, both for grilled cheese and for egg-in-a-nest. More even butter coverage, especially if the bread is hand sliced (which means that the bread doesn't lie on the pan evenly). Less wasted butter as well.

And, by the way, a glass to cut the hole out is less than ideal, whether or not the bread is buttered. Biscuit/cookie cutter is the way to go.

[andiesenji]

The first time I had toast and eggs prepared this way was in Chicago in 1949. My grandfather had taken us there for the dog show and we ate at a restaurant that had these on the menu as "Gas House Eggs" - and I have always used this name.

[Knicke]

I'm from Canton, OH - both sides of the family, even the ones from out Toledo way, call it 'egg-in-a-nest'. A very cozy name for a cozy dish.

[Lady T]

My late father called it "Egg in the Hole" and he buttered both sides of the thick-cut bread before he cut the hole (with a knife around the circumference of a juice glass) and it hit the pan. Eggs for the hole(s) were cracked into a teacup as the pan was heating, and were slipped one by one into each hole just after the toast began Side Two. 'Holes' were mostly cooked alongside, but sometimes got thrown out. Go figure.

Definite confirmation for the use of bacon fat. Hot sauce is good; good pico de gallo salsa can be even better.

Has anyone ever encountered a variation with good patty sausage? We did this at home at the holidays sometimes.

[Jaymes]

My late father called it "Egg in the Hole"...

Probably the best and most literal of all the choices of names.

However, I can tell you that when I was a kid, calling it "Toad in the Hole" made it seem like a much more interesting dish, and therefore, much more fun to eat.

Especially when we splashed hot sauce (blood) all over the toad.

[chezcherie]

as far as cutting goes, in our home, the hole MUST be cut with an ancient, slightly bent heart-shaped cutter. the hole gets toasted in the pan with the bread. we melt the butter in the pan, toast one side of the bread and cut-out, flip and break the egg in. the final prep step? a little corner of the heart cut-out piece must bear a nibble-mark from mom (me). "just to make sure it's good enough for you to eat, honey!"

having enjoyed this thread a great deal, i only wish i'd known about the name "one eyed-jack" before. my sons woulda loved that name when they were littler!

[Jaymes]

as far as cutting goes, in our home, the hole MUST be cut with an ancient, slightly bent heart-shaped cutter.

Boy, I wish I'd thought of that years ago. That would be the best! I think I'll get one now to use for my grandchildren!

[maggiethecat]

I've always made Egg in a hat using a slice of toast.

[Jaymes]

as far as cutting goes, in our home, the hole MUST be cut with an ancient, slightly bent heart-shaped cutter.

I want to tell you how much I appreciate your sharing this with us. Although it seems so obvious, it's something I had never thought of doing. After reading your post, I dug through an old forgotten box of cookie cutters left to me by my grandmother years ago and found a heart, star, four-leaf clover, Christmas tree, among other things. Although it's too late to use them for my own children (they are all grown and gone), I am now going to make a tradition of using them for my grandchildren. I think it's going to be great fun (especially the toasted bits in the cut-out shapes), and I really, really thank you.

And what shall I call it... Egg O' My Heart? Toad in a Tree?

Edited July 12, 2009 by Jaymes (log)

[andiesenji]

My late father called it "Egg in the Hole" and he buttered both sides of the thick-cut bread before he cut the hole (with a knife around the circumference of a juice glass) and it hit the pan.  Eggs for the hole(s) were cracked into a teacup as the pan was heating, and were slipped one by one into each hole just after the toast began Side Two. 'Holes' were mostly cooked alongside, but sometimes got thrown out.  Go figure.

Definite confirmation for the use of bacon fat.  Hot sauce is good; good pico de gallo salsa can be even better. 

Has anyone ever encountered a variation with good patty sausage?  We did this at home at the holidays sometimes.

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It didn't include toast and the eggs were from banty hens but when I was little I was served flapjacks that had been poured around a sausage patty with a hole in the middle and that was filled with a little egg.

They were called "bulls-eyes" and were a special treat.

[pyrguy]

I've always called it egg-in -a-hole.

My daughter-in-law calls it YUMMY!!!

She say it is a "one eyed sailor" as she heard it in girl scout camp.

[snowangel]

Based on the Betty Crocker's Boys and Girls Cookbook that my grandmother gave me back in the very early 60's, we always called them "Eggs in a Frame."

[Smitty]

There's a pretty good Wikipedia entry on this, which squares with what I know about this subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_in_the_basket

Wikipedia says "Egg in the basket" is the main name, but also cites alternate names:

"frog in a log," "Guy Kibbee Egg", "hen in a nest", "Rocky Mountain toast," "moon egg", "cowboy egg" ,"egg-in-the-hole", "one-eyed monster breakfast", "hobo eggs" and "One-eyed Jack". In some places it is known as "toad in the hole", not to be confused with the British sausage dish of the same name.

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My dad (from New England with an English mother) begrudgingly called it "toad in a hole" here in Michigan. He always made the point to my mom (German-Polish) that it wasn't the proper name but still called it by her regional name anyway.

I also find it funny that after this long together my mom has got him calling Yorkshire Pudding "pop-overs" (that probably makes my nan turnover in her grave)

I have only seen it flipped except in the mess hall.  I think that was probably due to economy of scale and they made toast for this and SOS and cooked the egg fast in pretoasted bread if you ordered "whatever you call it."

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My dad used to throw together SOS as a quick lunch for the kids. My mom finally let him tell me what "SOS" meant when I was about 10...but I wasn't allowed to tell my younger brother...yeah right

Side topic: my dad used to call corned beef and cabbage. "New England Boiled Dinner" (it usually included redskin potatoes and carrots as well). Is that a common thing? I've never heard it referred to that way by anyone else. EDIT: nevermind, a google search shows that 'New England BD' is a pretty widely used.

Edited July 12, 2009 by Smitty (log)