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Tripe, Eggs a La
Make a little roux with flour and butter; fry, in the same stewpan before the roux is made brown, a few chopped onions cut square. Moisten with some good boiling milk, and season with pepper and salt. Let the flour and onions be well done, and keep the sauce rather thick. Next have ten eggs boiled hard, cut them into quarters or round slices, and put them into the sauce. Stir gently that the yolk may not separate from the white, and serve up.
An onion béchamel with hard-boiled eggs folded in — the French oeufs à la tripe, which contains no tripe at all. The whole dish stands or falls on the onions being properly softened before the milk goes in.
- The hinge: cook the onions firstThe hinge: cook the onions through -- The book starts the roux, then adds the diced onions to it before the flour takes any colour, and has flour and onions cooked together until 'well done'. Give them long enough to soften: onions left underdone stay crunchy and the sauce tastes raw.
- "Before the roux is made brown"This is a white or blond roux, not a brown one. Keep the heat moderate and stop as soon as the flour loses its raw smell — a minute or two.
- Proportions, since none are givenFor ten eggs, figure about 2 oz butter, 2 oz flour, 2 large onions and roughly a pint (2 cups) of milk. The book says to keep the sauce rather thick; it should coat a spoon heavily, as it will slacken slightly once the eggs are in.
- Boiling milk mattersThe recipe calls for the milk boiling; adding it hot and in stages, whisking smooth between additions, keeps the sauce free of lumps. Liquid tipped in all at once is what causes them.
- StewpanAny wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan. A wide pan lets you fold the eggs in without breaking them.
- Hard-boiled eggsEight to nine minutes for a large egg, then straight into cold water. Longer boiling gives the grey-green ring and chalky yolks this dish is better without.
- FinishingWarm the eggs through in the sauce for two or three minutes only, folding gently. Any longer and the whites toughen. Season with pepper as the recipe directs; nutmeg often appears in French versions of the sauce.
- YieldTen eggs serves four to five as a supper dish, over toast, boiled potatoes or rice.
Oeufs à la tripe is one of the older jokes in French domestic cookery: the name records not an ingredient but an appearance, sliced hard-boiled eggs in a thick onion sauce being generally said to resemble tripe à la lyonnaise, tripe stewed with onions in the Lyonnais manner. The dish belongs to the family of onion-and-milk sauces that includes soubise and sauce blanche, and it earned its place in a late-Victorian household dictionary.