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Eggs and White Sauce
Cut five hard-boiled eggs in halves, so as to form cups of the whites when the yolk is removed. Mix the yolks to a paste with a table-spoonful of cream and an ounce of butter; add to it a tea-spoonful of minced onion and parsley, and when well flavoured with salt and cayenne, fill the whites and set them over steam till quite hot. Pare off the pointed tips, as before directed (see EGGS A LA BONNE FEMME), that they may stand steadily on the dish. Serve in white sauce. Time, ten minutes to boil eggs.
A straightforward stuffed-egg dish from the era before deviled eggs were served cold. The point of difference is that these are reheated and sauced, which changes how you handle the filling.
- Boiling timeTen minutes at a bare simmer gives firm yolks without the grey-green ring; the eggs go into already-boiling water and come out into cold water so they peel cleanly. Older eggs peel more easily than very fresh ones.
- Yolk paste consistencyOne tablespoon of cream and an ounce (2 tablespoons) of butter to five yolks makes a soft, pipeable paste. Have the butter properly soft rather than melted, or it will separate when the eggs are reheated over steam.
- Mince the onion very fineRaw onion is used here, so it must be nearly a paste or it will taste harsh and crunch against the smooth filling. A shallot is milder if you prefer it.
- Reheating over steamSet the filled halves on a plate over simmering water, covered, for five to eight minutes. Direct heat or an oven dries the whites out and makes them rubbery; the gentle steam is the whole reason the method is written this way.
- Paring the tipsSlicing a thin sliver off the pointed tip so each half sits flat is worth doing before filling, not after.
- The white sauceA plain butter roux, equal weights of butter and flour cooked out, then whisked with about a cup of milk and seasoned. Keep it thin enough to pool around the eggs rather than blanket them.
- CayenneThe recipe gives no quantity, only 'well flavoured'. A pinch, not a teaspoon.
- YieldTen halves serves four as a first course or light supper dish, two as a main with bread and salad.
Cassell's places this among a long run of egg preparations that treat the hard-boiled egg as a vessel rather than a snack a practice with a long history in European cookery and one that survives today as the deviled egg. The distinguishing habit here is serving them hot in sauce: an economical way to make five eggs read as a proper course at the table. The cross-reference to Eggs a la Bonne Femme is characteristic of the book, which is arranged as a dictionary and expects the reader to move between entries for shared technique rather than repeat it. White sauce here is close to what would now be called bechamel, a workhorse of the era's egg, fish and vegetable cookery.