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Whites of Eggs and Vegetables
Cut some small carrots, turnips, onions or any other vegetables, such as Jerusalem artichokes, celery, leeks, etc., and cook them till very tender. Poach four whites of eggs, and have ready a cheese sauce. Put the vegetables in a hot dish, and lay on whites of egg, and cover with the cheese sauce, with sprinkled parsley on top.
A leftovers dish in disguise: it exists to use up whites left after yolks have gone into custard or mayonnaise. The instructions assume you already know how to make a cheese sauce and how to handle whites in water, which is where most of the difficulty sits.
- Poaching whites is the hingeUnyolked whites spread and shred in rolling water. Bring the water to a bare shiver (about 170-180F), add a spoonful of vinegar, and slide each white in from a small cup or ladle so it sets in a mass. Two to three minutes is enough; they are done when opaque and just firm, and they toughen quickly past that.
- Cheese sauceA basic mornay: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, 1 cup milk cooked to a smooth white sauce, then 3-4 oz grated hard cheese stirred in off the heat. A dry aged Cheddar or Cheshire suits the period; Gruyere works. Do not boil after the cheese goes in or it will break and go grainy.
- Cooking the vegetables"Very tender" here means fully soft, not al dente, because the dish is served as a soft assembly under sauce. Cut everything to a comparable size and cook the roots separately from quick items like leeks and celery so nothing collapses.
- Jerusalem artichokesStill sold, sometimes as sunchokes. They discolour on cutting, so drop them into acidulated water, and they cook faster than carrot or turnip. Their inulin is famously hard on some digestions.
- Drain everything hardBoiled vegetables and poached whites both carry water, and a cheese sauce thinned by it will slide off. Drain the vegetables well and lift the whites onto a cloth or paper for a moment before assembling.
- Heat and browningThe original serves it straight from the hot dish. If you would rather set the top, a few minutes under a hot grill or in a 425F oven will glaze the sauce, but the whites will firm further, so keep it brief.
- YieldFour whites and a cup of sauce would stretch to about two as a light main course, or four as a first course. Season the sauce assertively with salt, pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or mustard; neither the whites nor boiled roots bring much of their own.
Books of meatless cookery from the early twentieth century contain many small dishes built on egg whites, and the reason looks like arithmetic rather than taste: yolks were in demand for custards, curds, mayonnaise and enriched sauces, leaving a thrifty kitchen with whites to use up. Rather than waste them, whites were poached, moulded or set and treated as a protein in place of meat, usually under a sauce that supplied the flavour and fat the whites lack. The pairing here with cheese sauce is doing exactly that work, and the list of vegetables, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, turnips, celery, reads like whatever the garden or greengrocer had to offer. Meatless cookery in this period was driven by economy, by Lenten and Friday observance, and later by wartime shortage, as well as by vegetarian conviction, and the recipes tend to be practical assemblies rather than inventions.