Fried Eggs
Cut the chicken in six pieces; put it in a stewpan with the salad oil; let it brown, which will take about ten minutes, then pour away the oil; add the mushrooms, the tomato, and the brown sauce, also the chives and the truffles; it is best to put the stewpan in the oven, with the lid on, and let simmer for about half an hour.
This should be nicely arranged on a silver dish, and served with croûtons of puff paste, called "fleurons"; fried eggs, i.e., eggs poached in hot oil, should also be used as a garnish.
The heading belongs to the garnish, not the dish: this is a brown chicken sauté finished in the oven, and the fried eggs are the last flourish. As is common in books written for cooks who already knew their trade, no quantities are given at all.
- The missing ingredient listNothing is quantified. For one chicken cut in six, work from roughly 4 tbsp oil, 8 oz mushrooms, one large tomato peeled and chopped, about 3/4 pint brown sauce, a tablespoon of chopped chives and a small truffle or two. Treat these as a starting point rather than the author's intention.
- "Fried eggs" means deep-friedThe recipe glosses its own term: eggs cooked in hot oil, not shallow-fried in a pan. This is the French oeuf frit; in that technique the white is usually rolled over the yolk with a spoon so it sets in an oval, though the recipe does not say so.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the direction is simply to cover the pan and let it simmer. A modern oven at around 325F will hold that gentle simmer; higher settings risk reducing the sauce faster than the chicken cooks.
- Brown sauceIn a book of this class, brown sauce means espagnole or a reduced demi-glace made in advance, not bottled table sauce. A well-reduced brown chicken or veal stock, lightly thickened, is the nearest modern equivalent.
- Pouring away the oilThis is the hinge. The browning oil is discarded before the sauce goes in, so the finished dish is not greasy. Leave the browned residue in the pan and let the sauce lift it.
- Truffles and chivesFresh black truffle is a serious expense; preserved truffle peelings, added at the end, give more return than a token slice cooked for half an hour. The chives go in with the sauce here, but they hold their colour and flavour better stirred in during the last few minutes.
- FleuronsCrescents cut from puff pastry with a round cutter, egg-washed and baked at 400F until risen and deep gold. Bake them separately and set them round the dish at the last moment or they soften.
- YieldA chicken cut in six serves four to six, depending on the rest of the menu. One fried egg per person is ample as garnish.
This comes from a tradition of cookery writing that left French vocabulary untranslated on the assumption the reader knew it: fleurons, and brown sauce meaning espagnole. The chicken jointed in six and browned in oil rather than butter, with tomato and mushrooms, suggests a southern French treatment, though the recipe specifies only "salad oil". Why the page is titled for its garnish rather than for the chicken is unclear. That truffles are called for without comment or quantity says something about the households the book was written for.