Eggs Aurore
Eggs aurore need a cream tomato sauce.
Stew the tomatoes with onion, bay leaf, salt and pepper; rub through a sieve and thicken, using 1 tablespoonful of butter and 12 of flour to each cupful. Make separately 1 cupful of cream sauce and mix the two together when taken from the fire. Poach the eggs in water, pour the combination sauce on a flat dish and in it place carefully the drained eggs.
A poached egg dish that stands or falls on the sauce: a sieved tomato purée folded into a béchamel off the heat. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the printed quantities need reading with care.
- The "12 of flour"This is a printer's error for a fraction: most likely 1/2 tablespoon of flour to each cupful of tomato purée, though a plain "1" to match the butter is just as possible a misreading. Twelve tablespoons of flour per cup would set into paste. Treat it as a light roux and thin with more purée if it stiffens.
- Cream sauceIn a book of this vintage "cream sauce" means a white sauce: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk, cooked until it no longer tastes of raw flour. It is not sweetened or whipped cream.
- Combine off the heatThe recipe is explicit that the two sauces are mixed only when taken from the fire. Acid tomato meeting a milk-based sauce can curdle, and combining off the burner avoids the risk; serve promptly rather than holding it hot.
- TomatoesCanned whole tomatoes work as well as fresh and give more consistent body; drain off some of the packing liquid before stewing. Stew 15-20 minutes with a slice of onion and a bay leaf, then sieve — a food mill or a fine strainer with a ladle does what the original sieve did.
- PoachingBarely simmering water, a splash of vinegar, and 3 minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Lift with a slotted spoon and rest briefly on a towel; wet eggs will thin the sauce on the platter.
- YieldThe quantities as given make roughly 2 cups of finished sauce, enough for four to six poached eggs. Served as a light supper or luncheon dish, two eggs per person.
- SeasoningSeason the tomato base, not the finished mixture — the white sauce dilutes it noticeably. Check for salt after combining and add a pinch more if flat.
Aurore is French for dawn, and in classical kitchen language it denotes any sauce tinted rose-pink by tomato: Escoffier's sauce aurore is a velouté or béchamel finished with tomato purée, and the name attaches to eggs, chicken and fish dressed the same way.