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Whites of Eggs, Poached
Butter a plain white jar, such as is used for jam, or a plain tin mould, and put in whites of eggs to an inch or so in depth; then set the jar in a saucepan containing boiling water, or place it in a potato steamer. Lay a buttered paper over, and cook the eggs until firm; then set by to get cold, and turn out. From the whites thus treated various shapes, such as strips, stars, etc., may be cut for garnishing.
A Victorian garnishing technique rather than a dish: egg white steamed into a solid white slab that can be cut like a sheet of pasta. The whole thing hinges on keeping the heat gentle.
- Keep the water below a boilDespite the instruction to set the jar in boiling water, egg white sets at around 145-150F and turns tough and weeping above that. Bring the water to the boil, then drop it to a bare shiver for the whole cooking time.
- The vesselA "plain white jar" is presumably an undecorated glazed jam jar; the recipe specifies nothing beyond plain and buttered. Something straight-sided turns out most easily -- a straight-sided ramekin, a small loaf tin or a wide ovenproof glass dish does the same job; anything with a lip or a curve will fight you at the turning-out stage.
- Buttered paperPresumably greaseproof or parchment laid over the top, buttered side down. It keeps condensation off the surface of the set white, which matters when the point of the exercise is a smooth, cuttable surface.
- TimingAn inch of white at a low steam will want something in the region of half an hour, but go by the recipe's own test rather than the clock: it is done when the centre no longer wobbles as a liquid. Overcooking gives a spongy, bubbled texture that crumbles when cut.
- QuantityAn inch of depth in a jar 3 inches across is about 115ml, so the whites of three or four large eggs, and that yields enough cut shapes to garnish a large chaudfroid, aspic or cold salmon.
- Chilling is not optionalWarm set white tears under a knife. Cold from the refrigerator it cuts cleanly with small aspic cutters or a sharp thin blade, which is the entire reason for "set by to get cold".
- Season lightly or not at allThe original adds nothing. A pinch of salt is fine, but anything that adds colour or cloudiness works against the whiteness that is the point of the garnish.
The nineteenth-century cold buffet ran on contrast, and cooks needed a pure white element to cut into stars, crescents and strips against dark truffle, red tongue, green pistachio and amber aspic. Set white paired with sieved yolk in this decorative vocabulary, both of them by-products of a kitchen that separated eggs constantly for meringues, custards and clarifying stock. The technique is a bain-marie in miniature, the same gentle indirect heat used for custards and quenelles, and the potato steamer appears as an alternative simply because it was to hand. Elaborate cold-larder garnishing of this kind faded through the twentieth century as plating tastes simplified, though the same set-and-cut trick survives in classical charcuterie work.