Eggs à la Morelle
Boil six or eight eggs hard twenty minutes. Make a nice white sauce in a double saucepan with a pint of cream, mix a tablespoonful of butter with flour, add gently and carefully to cream, salt, red pepper, and a little onion juice. When the sauce is made, cut the eggs in half and add the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs cloaked in a silky cream sauce — a genteel breakfast or supper dish built on a simple flour-thickened white sauce.
- “A pint of cream”That’s 2 cups. For a lighter sauce, use half cream and half whole milk.
- The thickening“A tablespoonful of butter mixed with flour” is a beurre manié — equal parts soft butter and flour worked to a paste, then whisked into the hot cream to thicken it smoothly, without lumps.
- Cook it gentlyThe “double saucepan” is a double boiler; it keeps the cream from scorching or curdling. A heatproof bowl over simmering water does the same job.
- “Red pepper” and onion juiceRed pepper here means a pinch of cayenne; onion juice is simply grated onion squeezed for its liquid, adding savor without any texture.
- Don’t over-boil the eggsTwenty minutes is long by modern lights and greys the yolks; 10–12 minutes gives firm, golden yolks. Halve them and nap generously with the warm sauce.
Creamed hard-boiled eggs were a mainstay of Victorian and Edwardian cookery, a way to turn a few pantry staples into something that felt like a small luxury. The white sauce at its heart — butter, flour, and cream or milk — is a cousin of the French béchamel, the classic milk-and-flour foundation of countless dishes. Names in the “à la” style were often a household’s or a cook’s personal flourish rather than a fixed classical formula, and this homely, elegant plate of eggs in cream sits comfortably in that tradition of everyday refinement.
From page 48 of the 1904 edition.
Original pages from the book
