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One White of Egg
One gill of Stock.
A little Salt.
Beat up the eggs with the stock and a little salt; strain this into a well-buttered gallipot, cover it over with a piece of kitchen paper buttered, stand it in a saucepan of boiling water, and steam it very gently for fifteen minutes; if steamed quickly the custard will be full of holes.
When the custard is set take it out of the sauce- B 2
This is a savoury egg custard for cutting into shapes and floating in clear soup — what French kitchens call a royale. The text is a fragment: the heading gives only part of the ingredient list, and the last line breaks off mid-sentence at the signature mark of the printed page.
- The missing ingredientsThe instruction says "beat up the eggs" though the surviving heading reads only "One White of Egg", so the heading is plainly incomplete. Recipes of this type commonly call for one or more whole eggs together with an extra white or yolk, but what the lost line specified here cannot be recovered from the fragment.
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz or 140 ml — a little over half a US cup. The stock should be a good clear consomm or.
- GallipotA small straight-sided glazed earthenware jar. Any small ramekin, teacup or shallow tin works; a wide shallow vessel is better than a deep one, because you want a sheet about half an inch thick to cut from.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe warning in the original is the whole point. Water at a rolling boil drives steam bubbles through the mixture and leaves it honeycombed and weeping. Keep the water at a bare tremble rather than a hard boil and the custard will be smooth and sliceable.
- Cover itThe buttered kitchen paper keeps condensation off the surface, which would otherwise pit it and make it watery. Buttered parchment or foil does the same job.
- StrainStraining removes the ropy albumen threads that would show as white streaks in a custard meant to look like pale ivory.
- Timing and donenessFifteen minutes suits a shallow ramekin; a deeper pot needs 20 to 25. It is done when the centre no longer trembles as a liquid and a knife point comes out clean.
- How the fragment endsThe lost line presumably directed the cook to lift the pot from the pan and let the custard cool before turning it out and cutting it into dice, rounds or diamonds. Chill it first — warm royale crumbles under the knife. The shapes go into the plates before the hot soup is poured over.
A royale is one of the classical garnishes for clear soup, and by the late nineteenth century garnished consomm ersners in the French manner: custard cut into diamonds, quenelles, tiny profiteroles, shredded pancake. The name is generally traced to the idea of a dish fit for a royal table, though that is tradition rather than documented etymology. The technique — egg loosened with liquid and set by gentle steam rather than dry heat — is shared with Japanese chawanmushi and with soft baked custards. The garnish was a separate item of work, prepared in advance and kept cold, so that the consomm omm e itself could go out clear and scalding at the moment of service. Coloured variants are recorded in the same period: spinach pur or green, tomato for red.