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Golden Eggs
4 hard cooked eggs 1 tablespoonful vinegar 1 egg yolk I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour I/2 pint (I cup) milk Some croûtons I heaping tablespoonful (I Salt and pepper oz.) butter Put the vinegar into a casserole and boil it till it almost evaporates, then add the butter and the flour, mix well, add the milk, stir till it boils, and cook for five minutes, stirring all the time; then add the raw yolk of egg, salt and pepper to taste, stir for a few minutes longer. Cut the whites of hard boiled eggs in strips, add them to the mixture. Turn out on to a shallow earthenware dish, rub the yolks through a sieve on the top. Put the croûtons round the edge.
A simple flour-thickened white sauce enriched with a raw yolk, folded with sliced egg white and finished with sieved yolk. Two things decide whether it works: the sauce must not be allowed to boil once the yolk goes in, and the vinegar reduction must be taken almost to dryness.
- "Casserole" means the panHere the casserole is plainly a stovetop cooking vessel (the sauce is boiled in it), not a baking dish; the mixture is turned out onto a separate shallow earthenware dish to serve. Any small heavy saucepan does the same job.
- The vinegar stepBoiling a tablespoon of vinegar until it has nearly gone leaves a trace of acidity that sharpens an otherwise bland sauce. Stop while a glaze still films the pan; a dry pan will scorch the butter that follows.
- Butter and flour by weightA "heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.)" of each is about 2 tablespoons butter and a scant 1/4 cup flour. With 1 cup of milk that gives a thick, spoon-coating sauce meant to hold the egg whites together.
- The raw yolkAdd it off the heat, or with the pan barely warm, and stir hard. Returned to a boil the yolk will curdle into threads and the sauce will break. "Stir for a few minutes longer" means over gentle heat only, until it thickens slightly.
- Hard cooked eggsTwelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives firm whites and yolks without the grey ring. The yolks must be dry and crumbly to pass through a sieve cleanly.
- CroûtonsPeriod croûtons here are small triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter until golden, not the dice sold for salads. Set them round the edge at the last moment so they stay crisp.
- YieldFour eggs and a cup of milk serves two as a light supper or four as a first course. It is a dish for immediate eating; the sauce stiffens and dulls on standing.
Golden Eggs belongs to a large family of egg-and-white-sauce dishes — œufs à la tripe, eggs à la crème, eggs au gratin — that let a cook turn four eggs and a cup of milk into something that looked composed on the table. The finish of hard yolk pushed through a sieve is the garnish French kitchens call mimosa, after the fluffy yellow blossom.