Duchesse Eggs
Boil half a dozen eggs until hard, and put them in cold water; when cool take off the shells and cut them lengthwise in quarters. Put 1 tablespoonful of butter and 1 of flour in a saucepan over the fire, and stir until thoroughly blended, but do not let it brown. Add gradually 1 cupful of white stock and stir until it is smooth and thick. Add 1 tablespoonful of vinegar or lemon juice, 1 tablespoonful each of capers and chopped parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Put the eggs in carefully without breaking, and simmer gently for five minutes. Serve on a hot platter with a border of triangles of crisp toast, garnished with sprigs of parsley.
A hard-boiled egg dish dressed in a sharp velouté — essentially eggs in a caper sauce. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes and depends on two things: a well-cooked roux base and gentle handling of the eggs.
- White stockThis means an unbrowned chicken or veal stock, made from bones blanched rather than roasted. A good low-sodium chicken stock is the practical substitute; season at the end, since a cup of sauce reduces very little here.
- Cook the roux before the liquidButter and flour need a full minute or two of stirring over moderate heat to lose their raw taste, but the instruction not to let it brown is the point — colour would turn this into a velouté's darker cousin and muddy the sauce.
- EggsHard-boiled and quartered lengthwise, six eggs gives twenty-four wedges. Shocking them in cold water, as directed, both loosens the shells and stops the greenish ring at the yolk.
- The five-minute simmerBarely a simmer. Quartered hard eggs will break up if the sauce is bubbling or if they are stirred; tilt and shake the pan instead of using a spoon.
- CapersRinse brined capers before chopping, or the sauce will be too salt once the vinegar goes in. Taste before adding any salt at all.
- AcidA tablespoon of vinegar into a cup of sauce is assertive by modern taste. Lemon juice is the gentler of the two options given, and adding it off the heat keeps the brightness.
- YieldServes three or four as a light supper or brunch dish. Make the toast triangles last so they are still crisp when the eggs go over them.
"Duchesse" is one of the standard nineteenth-century French garnish names that English and American cookbooks borrowed wholesale, usually signalling something rich, pale and a little formal — pommes duchesse being the best-known survivor. Egg cookery of this kind was common in household books of the period, where a sauce built on a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of flour and a cup of stock could turn six boiled eggs into a course fit to send to table. The capers and vinegar recall the older English caper sauces served with mutton, here set on a French roux base — the kind of pairing consolidated recipe collections of this era often produced, drawing from professional French practice and plain domestic cooking on the same page.