Egg Balls
Mix the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs with raw yolk of one egg, a little flour; roll the size of a hazel nut.
A garnish rather than a dish: these are the small egg balls that float in mock turtle, giblet and clear brown soups. The original assumes you know what to do with them once rolled, so the gaps are worth filling.
- The hinge: cook them separatelyThe recipe stops at rolling and never says how the balls are set. Simmering them in the tureen risks their breaking up and clouding the soup, so poach them for two to three minutes in a small pan of barely simmering salted water or stock, lift out, and add to the bowls at serving.
- Sieve the cooked yolksPress the hard-boiled yolks through a fine sieve before mixing. Mashing with a fork leaves lumps that break the balls apart in the liquid.
- The flour is deliberately vague"A little flour" means as much as the paste will take and no more, roughly 1 to 2 teaspoons for three yolks. Too much and the balls turn to dumplings; too little and they disintegrate.
- Hazelnut sizeRoughly 3/4 inch across, a scant teaspoon of paste each. Much larger and the centre may not set in the time the outside takes.
- YieldThree yolks give roughly 12 to 16 balls, enough to garnish four to six bowls of soup at two or three apiece.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives none. Some period versions of egg balls are seasoned with salt, white pepper and a grating of nutmeg or a pinch of mace, which suits the mock turtle soups they were used in.
- Make them aheadThey hold a few hours in the refrigerator, poached and drained. Warm them through in the soup for a minute at the last moment.
Egg balls belong to the vanished grammar of garnishes that once separated a served soup from a merely cooked one: alongside forcemeat balls, quenelles, croutons and vermicelli, they were the finishing touch on clear and brown soups. They are most closely associated with mock turtle soup, the calf's-head imitation of real turtle soup familiar on nineteenth-century English and American tables, where the pale balls are often said to have stood in for the turtle's own eggs, a delicacy of the genuine article.