There are certain British institutions that have been steadily declining since the 1970s — the working men’s club, the local pub with a skittle alley, the community centre that doubles as a bingo hall — but none as gently, gracefully fading as the cricket pavilion. Not the grand, white-gloved Lord’s kind, but the ones bolted to the back of a village green, windows steamed up with condensation, a kettle that’s seen better decades, and a tea tray that’s been passed around since the invention of the teapot.
The pavilion tea tray is Britain’s original share plate. Before tapas, before mezze, before anyone outside the Middle East had heard of mezze, the English cricket pavilion had a tin tray with four slightly different sandwiches, two scones that could have doubled as doorstops, and somewhere in there, a couple of boiled eggs cut into wedges and dotted with cress like tiny green explosions. Not glamorous. Not Instagrammable. But there’s something deeply comforting about food that exists entirely for the purpose of keeping you going through four hours of watching seven men in white trousers stare at a leather ball.
Shirred eggs are the pavilion’s secret upgrade. Baked in butter with cream, they’re the sort of dish a pavilion cook makes when she’s had enough of cutting boiled eggs into wedges and decides the spectators deserve something that doesn’t come with the threat of salmonella from a kettle that hasn’t been properly cleaned since the Ashes of 1989. Here’s the recipe.
Ingredients
- 4 eggs (ideally free-range — the pavilion chickens had it rough, but we’re not that sort of establishment)
- 2 tbsp butter, plus extra for greasing
- 3 tbsp double cream
- 2 rashers smoked back bacon, cut into lardons
- Handful of mature Cheddar, finely grated (about 50g)
- Fresh chives, finely snipped
- Sea salt and black pepper
- A handful of cress (because the pavilion would have it, and tradition matters)
- 4 slices of bread, toasted, for mopping up what’s left
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). The pavilion doesn’t have a fan oven, but this isn’t the pavilion.
- Butter four ramekins generously. We’re not doing anything that butter can’t help with.
- Cook the bacon lardons in a dry pan until they start to crisp at the edges. Drain on kitchen paper. Scatter half into the bottom of each ramekin.
- Crack an egg into each ramekin. Don’t worry about the yolk staying intact — this isn’t eggs Benedict and it doesn’t need to pretend it is.
- Dot with small knobs of butter — about half a teaspoon per ramekin.
- Drizzle the double cream over the eggs, dividing it as evenly as your sense of fairness allows.
- Sprinkle with the grated Cheddar, then season generously with black pepper. A pinch of salt too, though the bacon has already contributed its own.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the egg whites are set but the yolks still have a gentle wobble. The pavilion would overcook them by a further ten minutes because the kettle takes priority. You’re not the pavilion.
- Remove and scatter over chives and cress. Serve immediately with the toast for mopping up the creamy butter-egg-cheese residue at the bottom of each ramekin — the best bit, if we’re being honest.
Serve with a pot of strong tea and the sort of quiet satisfaction that only comes from eating something genuinely good while watching people you vaguely know play a sport they’ve been playing since they were six. That’s the pavilion experience in a nutshell. Or rather, in a ramekin.
