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Neige (a cheap and pretty Supper Dish)
INGREDIENTS for medium-sized dish.- 4 eggs, 0/4 pint of milk, pounded sugar to taste, flavouring of vanilla, lemon-rind, or orangeflour water. AVERAGE COST, 7d. Put the milk into a saucepan with sufficient sugar to sweeten it nicely, and the rind of 1/24 lemon. Let this steep by the side of the fire for 1/2 hour, when take out the peel; separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs, and whisk the former to a perfectly stiff froth, or until there is no liquid remaining; bring the milk to the boiling-point, drop in the snow a tablespoonful at a time, and keep turning the eggs until sufficiently cooked. Then place EGGS, TO KEEP FRESH. them on a glass dish, beat up the yolks of the eggs, stir to them the milk, add a little more sugar, and strain this mixture into a jug; place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water, and stir it one way until the mixture thickens, but do not allow it to boil, or it will curdle. Pour this custard over the eggs, when they should rise to the surface. They make an exceedingly pretty addition to a supper, and should be put in a cold place after being made. When they are flavoured with vanilla or orangeflowered water, it is not necessary to steep the milk. A few drops of the essence of either may be poured into the milk just before the whites are poached. In making the custard a little more flavouring and sugar should always be added.
TIME. About 2 minutes to poach the whites; 8 minutes to stir the custard.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Eggs, to keep Fresh for several weeks. Have ready a large saucepan, capable of holding 3 or 4 quarts, full of boiling water. Put the eggs into a cabbage-net, say 20 at a time, and hold them in the water (which must be kept boiling) for 20 seconds. Proceed in this manner till you have done as many eggs as you wish to preserve, then pack them in sawdust. We have tried this method of preserving eggs, and can vouch for its excellence. They will be found, at the end of 2 or 3 months, quite good enough for culinary purposes, and although the white may be a little tougher than that of a new-laid egg, the yolk will be nearly the same. Many persons keep eggs for a long time by smearing the shells with butter or sweet oil: they should then be packed in plenty of bran or sawdust, and the eggs not allowed to touch each other. Eggs for storing should be collected in fine weather, and should not be more than 24 hours old when they are packed away, or their flavour, when used, cannot be relied on.
Another simple way of preserving eggs is to immerse them in lime-water soon after they have been laid, and then to put the vessel containing the lime-water in a cellar or cool outhouse.
SEASONABLE. The best time for preserving eggs is from April to September. Eggs à la Tripe. - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-8 eggs, pint of Béchamel sauce, dessertspoonful of finelyminced parsley. AVERAGE COST, 1s. Boil the eggs hard; put them into cold water, peel them, take out the yolks whole, EMPRESS PUDDING. and shred the whites. Make pint of Béchamel sauce, add the parsley, and when the sauce is quite hot, put the yolks of the eggs into the middle of the dish, and the shreds of the whites around them; pour over the sauce and garnish with leaves of puff paste or fried croûtons. There is no necessity for putting the eggs into the saucepan with the Béchamel; the sauce, being quite hot, will warm the eggs sufficiently.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the eggs.
SEASONABLE at any time.
This is Mrs Beeton's version of what the French call œufs à la neige — meringue "snow" poached in milk, floated on a custard made from the same milk and the leftover yolks. It is straightforward, but two temperatures decide whether it works.
- Do not let the custard boilThe yolks are thickened over water in a jug, and the mixture must stay below about 180F/82C. Stir constantly in one direction and pull it off as soon as it coats the spoon; once it curdles there is no recovery beyond sieving.
- Poach, do not boil, the whitesThe instruction to bring the milk to the boiling-point is best read as bringing it just to the point of trembling, then dropping the heat. At a rolling boil the spoonfuls of meringue break up and toughen. About two minutes, turning them as they cook, is enough.
- The milk quantityThe figure for the milk is unclear in this text. For four egg whites and four yolks, half an imperial pint (10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups) makes a properly thick custard; up to 15 fl oz gives a pouring sauce.
- "Rind of 1/4 lemon""Rind of a lemon" -- The fraction is garbled in this text and cannot be recovered with confidence. Take a wide strip or two of peel with no white pith, steep it in the warm milk off direct heat for 30 minutes, then lift it out before the whites go in.
- Orange-flower water"Orange-flour water" here is orange-flower water, the distilled blossom essence still sold for Middle Eastern baking. As the recipe notes, essences are added just before poaching rather than steeped.
- The jug in a saucepanThis is an improvised bain-marie. A heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, not touching it, does the same job with better control.
- Whisking the whites"Until there is no liquid remaining" means stiff peaks with no loose egg white pooling at the bottom of the bowl. A pinch of sugar whisked in at the end helps the spoonfuls hold their shape in the milk.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no serving count beyond 'a medium-sized dish'; four whites dropped in a tablespoonful at a time will make a good number of snowballs. Assemble and chill; the meringues weep if they sit at room temperature for long, so serve within a few hours.
"Neige" is simply snow, and the dish is a relative of the French u0153ufs een in in cookery books since the eighteenth century.