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EGGS (a la Tripe)
Cut half a dozen onions into slices, let them fall into rings, and fry them in butter, without browning them. Take them up and put them aside. Mix a spoonful of flour with the butter to make a paste, and add milk or broth to make a smooth thick sauce. Put in the onions and stew them gently till tender. Remove the shells from the eggs, slice the white parts, and leave the yolks whole. Put the sliced whites into the sauce with the onions till hot. Serve in a hot dish and garnish with the uncut egg-yolks.
EGGS (a la Tripe), another way.
Boil six eggs for ten minutes, and lay them in cold water. Boil two Spanish onions. When partly done, change the water, and when quite done, peel and slice them. Simmer the slices of onion for another half-hour in milk, and add a bit of butter rolled in flour. Slice the eggs lengthwise, and stir the sauce until it is as smooth and thick as cream, then put in the eggs. Garnish the dish with sippets of toast, and serve with some newly-made mustard. Time to boil onions, two hours or more. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
Two versions of the same dish: hard-boiled eggs in an onion cream sauce. The first assumes knowledge the text never states — the eggs must already be hard-boiled and shelled before you begin.
- The missing instructionVersion one says only "remove the shells from the eggs." Boil them first: 10 minutes for firm yolks, then straight into cold water so the shells release and the yolks stay yellow rather than grey-green.
- Do not brown the onionsThis is the hinge. The name is usually explained by appearance: pale sliced egg white in a white onion sauce was thought to recall tripe in cream. Browned onion destroys both the colour and the mild flavour. Keep the butter below a sizzle and cook the rings until translucent and floppy.
- Two hours of boiling onionsThe stated time is very long by modern standards; Spanish onions are large, and the period plainly wanted them cooked to collapse. Modern onions are tender in 20 to 30 minutes of simmering. Changing the water partway, as the recipe directs, would draw off some of the sulphurous sharpness and is still worth doing if your onions are strong.
- A spoonful of flourRead this as a rounded tablespoon against roughly the same volume of butter, which will thicken about a cup of milk or broth into a sauce of pouring-cream consistency. Add the liquid gradually and cook the roux a minute first so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast or fried bread, arranged round the rim of the dish. They exist to soak up the sauce and to give the soft dish some texture.
- The mustard"Newly-made" means English mustard powder mixed with cold water shortly before serving; it loses its heat within the hour. A prepared English mustard is the closest substitute.
- Quantities and yieldSix eggs, half a dozen onions in the first version or two large Spanish onions in the second, serving three or four as a supper dish. The "probable cost, 1s." is the book's own estimate.
- ServingEverything must be genuinely hot and the dish warmed, since the sauce sets and dulls quickly. Season the sauce properly with salt, pepper and a scrape of nutmeg — the original leaves seasoning entirely to the cook.
The name puzzles readers who expect tripe in it: œufs à la tripe is a French kitchen term generally said to describe appearance rather than content, the sliced egg white lying in pale onion sauce being traditionally thought to resemble cooked tripe. The dish is a close cousin of tripe and onions and of onion soubise, and belongs to the large nineteenth-century category of made dishes built on a flour-and-butter sauce, eggs and a cheap vegetable. The whole dish is one béchamel, one aromatic and one protein. Meatless dishes of this kind earned their place in Victorian household books for Fridays, Lent, and the many days when a family kept eggs but not a butcher's bill, and the accompanying mustard supplies the sharpness the dish otherwise lacks.