Home › Egg Recipes › Eggs in Cocottes
Eggs in Cocottes
1 saltspoonful white pepper 1/2 teaspoonful onion juice 1/2 pint (I cup) milk ½ teaspoonful salt Some bread sauce Break the eggs into a bowl, add the onion juice, salt, and pepper. Beat only until thoroughly blended, then add gradually the milk. Divide equally into six
A savoury baked egg custard portioned into individual cocottes. The measurements are period ones and the quantity of eggs is not given in the text as it stands, so treat the proportions below as the guide.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter of a teaspoon. One saltspoonful of white pepper is a mild seasoning for the half-pint of milk called for here.
- CocottesSmall straight-sided porcelain or earthenware ramekins of about 4 to 5 fl oz. Butter them well; baked egg sticks hard to unbuttered china.
- Egg quantityThe list gives no number of eggs; the original figure is missing and cannot be recovered from the text.
- Onion juiceGrate an onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate directly into a bowl and use the liquid.
- Do not whipThe instruction to beat only until blended matters. Air beaten into the eggs makes the custard souffle up in the oven and then collapse and weep as it cools.
- Water bath and ovenThe text as it survives gives no baking instruction. Cocottes of this kind are usually set in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up their sides and baked in a moderate oven; direct dry heat curdles the mixture at the edges before the centre sets.
- DonenessTake them out when the custard is set at the rim and still faintly wobbly at the centre, usually 15 to 20 minutes. Carryover heat finishes them in the hot dishes.
- The bread sauceBread sauce here is the English milk-and-crumb sauce flavoured with onion and clove, used as a spoonful in the bottom of each cocotte or over the top. Make it slack rather than stiff so it does not sit as a lump.
- YieldSix cocottes, which is a first course or a light supper dish for six, or three servings if it is the centre of the meal.
Cooking eggs en cocotte is a French restaurant habit that English and American cookery books took up in their turn. The appeal was partly presentation and partly control: an egg baked in its own small vessel, standing in water, cooks gently and arrives at the table in the dish it was made in, which suited households serving without a large kitchen staff. The pairing with bread sauce is an English touch rather than a French one, that sauce being the standing accompaniment to roast poultry and game.