William Courtleigh
POACHED EGGS
Rub the chafing dish with a piece of garlic.
Place in it a small piece of butter and allow to melt.
Add ¼ pint of strained tomato; allow to come to a boil, then add a ¼ pint of cream.
Season with pepper, salt and a dash of paprika.
Break four eggs and drop into ingredients and allow to cook.
Toast two English muffins and serve the whole
VERY HOT
The above is my favorite dish. 23 Sincerer lean Garte
A chafing-dish supper of the sort actors ate after the curtain came down: eggs poached directly in a tomato-cream sauce and spooned over muffins. It comes together in about ten minutes, and the only real skill is not letting the cream break.
- The quantitiesEach measure printed as "14 pint" is a quarter pint, that is 1/2 cup or 4 fl oz. So half a cup of strained tomato and half a cup of cream, which is about right for four eggs.
- Strained tomatoThis means tomato pulp pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seeds -- close to today's passata or tomato puree, not the concentrated paste sold in tubes. Canned crushed tomatoes run through a sieve work well.
- Do not let it boil after the cream goes inThe instruction to boil applies to the tomato alone. Once the cream is added, hold the pan at a bare shiver; the acid in the tomato will curdle cream that is pushed to a rolling boil.
- The garlic rubRubbing a cut clove around the pan leaves only a trace of flavour, which is the intent. If you want the garlic to register, soften a minced clove in the butter instead.
- Cooking the eggsBreak the eggs into a cup first, slide them in, cover the pan, and give them 3 to 4 minutes for a set white and a running yolk. Cook the eggs through if serving anyone who should avoid soft yolks.
- Chafing dish or stovetopA chafing dish sits over a spirit lamp and delivers gentle, indirect heat, which is exactly what this needs. A wide skillet over low heat, or a heavy pan with a flame tamer, gives the same result.
- YieldFour eggs and two split muffins serve two generously, or four as a light course. Season the sauce before the eggs go in, since salt sprinkled over a poached yolk sits on the surface.
The chafing dish was the emblematic cooking vessel of the late-Victorian and Edwardian stage set: portable, fuelled by a spirit lamp, and usable in a hotel room or a dressing room where there was no kitchen. Whole cookbooks were devoted to it, and chafing-dish suppers turn up frequently among actors' contributions to charity cookbooks. Eggs poached in a seasoned tomato sauce is an old and widely distributed idea, appearing across the Mediterranean and the Middle East under many names; the addition of cream and the bed of English muffin place this version squarely in the American hotel-supper tradition that also produced eggs Benedict. William Courtleigh (1869-1930) was a stage and later silent-film actor active in the Actors' Equity Association in its early years.