Home › Whites of Eggs › Whites of Eggs En Bâté
Whites of Eggs En Bâté
Take some poached whites, not too hard, which have been poached in a poacher, and dredge with black pepper. Dip the white first in cream or lightly butter it. Then wrap it up in very thin light puff paste, and bake.
A frugal way to use up whites left from a yolk-heavy recipe: soft-poached whites sealed in thin puff pastry and baked. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the pastry, so treat it as a puff-pastry problem with an egg inside.
- The hinge: a hot ovenThe recipe says only "bake," but puff paste needs strong heat to steam its layers apart. Modern practice would be around 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry is browned and dry to the touch, and serve immediately.
- "Poached in a poacher"Most likely the covered metal egg poacher with greased cups rather than free-poaching in water, which gives whites more ragged to wrap. Butter the cups, add the whites, cover, and cook only until just set and still trembling — roughly 2 to 3 minutes.
- Not too hardThe whites cook again in the oven, so underdo the poaching deliberately. Whites that are already firm turn squeaky and rubbery after 20 minutes in a hot oven.
- DredgeHere it means sprinkle, not coat in flour. The recipe calls for black pepper only; a little salt is an optional addition, since the dish is otherwise very plain.
- Puff pasteModern all-butter frozen puff pastry is a reasonable stand-in. Roll it thin — about 1/8 inch — because a thick wrapper will not cook through before the egg overcooks.
- Cream or butterThe recipe does not say why; a film of cream or soft butter adds richness and may also keep the white from bonding to the pastry. Do not let cream pool inside the parcel or the base will go sodden.
- Sealing and finishingChill the wrapped parcels 15 minutes before baking, seal the edges by pressing firmly rather than crimping thick, and brush the tops with cream or a beaten yolk for colour. Bake seam-side down on parchment.
- YieldThe recipe gives none. Two parcels per person as a light course is a reasonable working figure, and roughly 8 oz of pastry should cover about six whites.
Recipes of this kind exist for a purely practical reason: custards, curds, mayonnaise, gold cake and ice creams eat yolks by the half-dozen and leave the whites behind, and a thrifty kitchen was expected to find them a dignified use rather than pour them away. "En bâté" may be a garbling of the French en pâte, in pastry — though this is a guess rather than a documented derivation — the same idea as a saucisson en croûte, scaled down to a single egg white and borrowing a French phrase to lend a very cheap ingredient a restaurant air. Dressing up frugality in French was standard practice in the period's cookbooks, and the naming is often shakier than the cooking.