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Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce
Make Tomato Sauce in the blazer, according to recipe on page 21, and keep it hot by filling the hot-water pan with boiling water. Break six eggs on a plate and slide them into the blazer carefully. Baste them with the sauce so that the tops and bottoms will be equally congealed. One pint of sauce will do nicely for six eggs. Serve on squares of toast and sprinkle with grated cheese.
A chafing-dish supper dish that works just as well in a wide skillet. The whole thing hinges on heat: the sauce should be at a bare quiver, never a boil.
- The blazer and the hot-water panA chafing dish has two parts: the blazer is the shallow upper pan that sits over the flame, and the hot-water pan slots beneath it as a bain-marie. In a modern kitchen, use a 10-inch skillet over the lowest burner setting, or set a heatproof dish over a pan of simmering water.
- A pint of sauceTwo cups, which is the right amount to hold six eggs in a single layer without crowding. Get it hot before the eggs go in; cold sauce means the whites spread and thin out.
- Temperature is the whole trickSauce at a full boil toughens the whites and makes them rubbery before the yolks set. Keep it just below a simmer, with the surface barely moving; the recipe's boiling water in the pan beneath is there to hold the sauce hot, not to boil it.
- Basting versus coveringBasting spoonfuls of sauce over the tops is what sets them evenly in an open chafing dish. If you are working in a covered skillet, simply put the lid on for the last two minutes and let the trapped steam do it.
- TimingFour to six minutes gives set whites and soft yolks; eight or more and the yolks go chalky. The original gives no time at all and leaves it to the cook's eye.
- Break the eggs onto a plate firstNot fussiness. Sliding them in from a plate keeps the yolks intact and lets you spot a bad egg before it hits the sauce.
- Grated cheeseThis wants a hard, dry cheese that will grate. Use Parmesan or Pecorino; fresh mozzarella or pre-shredded blends will only go stringy or watery.
- YieldSix eggs on six squares of toast serves three as a supper dish, or six as a first course. Toast the bread just before serving so it does not go soft under the sauce.
This comes from the chafing-dish chapter of Rufus Estes's Good Things to Eat (1911), the cookbook of a Pullman Company chef who had been born into slavery in Tennessee. Chafing dishes were at the height of their popularity in the years around 1900: a spirit lamp, a blazer and a water pan let a host cook at the table in a parlor or a private railway car, without a kitchen, which explains why a whole section of the book is built around a single pan. Eggs cooked in a tomato sauce appear across the Mediterranean under many names, and the technique was familiar enough to American cooks of the period that Estes simply cross-references his own tomato sauce on page 21 and gets on with it. The dish belongs to a family of late-Victorian and Edwardian egg dishes served on toast squares -- quick, warm, and elegant enough for company without requiring anything roasted.