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To Poach Whites of Eggs
Turn the whites of the eggs into a well-buttered mould or cup, set upon a trivet in a dish of hot water, and cook until firm, either upon the back of the range or in the oven, and without letting the water boil. Turn from the mould, cut into slices, and then into fanciful shapes; or chop fine.
This is a garnish technique rather than a dish: firm-set egg whites, cut into shapes to decorate a salad, most often paired with the yolks pressed through a sieve. A few notes on translating the equipment and the temperature.
- The hinge: never let the water boilEgg white sets around 150-160F and turns rubbery and weeping above that. Hold the water bath at a bare 170-180F, with no bubbles breaking the surface, or the whites will be tough and full of holes and will crumble when sliced.
- "The back of the range"On a coal range this meant the coolest zone, away from the firebox, where a pan sits just below a simmer. Modern equivalent: the lowest burner setting, or a low oven with the mould in a water bath, kept low enough that the water never bubbles.
- Trivet in a dish of hot waterAny low rack, a folded towel, or a ring of crumpled foil in a roasting pan does the same job — it keeps the mould off the hot metal so the whites cook by surrounding heat, not by contact. Water should reach halfway up the mould.
- Mould or cupA buttered ramekin, custard cup or small straight-sided tin. Straight sides matter more than shape here, since the point is to unmould a solid block that slices cleanly.
- Quantity and timingThe original gives neither, so both must be judged by eye: in a small ramekin the whites will need a fair while at this low heat, and are done when the centre no longer wobbles and a knife point comes out clean.
- Cooling before cuttingThe recipe goes straight from mould to knife, but in practice warm set white tears; unmoulding and chilling first lets it cut to clean rings, crescents and diamonds with a small aspic cutter or a paring knife.
- What to do with the yolksThe recipe uses only the whites and says nothing about the yolks, which would have been kept for use elsewhere. Poached whites on their own are bland, so any seasoning is best carried by whatever they garnish.
Late-Victorian and Edwardian salad-making is often said to have treated the plate as a piece of decoration, and small techniques for producing white and yellow ornament from an egg are traditionally associated with the period: sieved yolk, chopped white scattered in bands, and set whites cut into stars and crescents. Poaching the whites separately in a mould gave a firmer, more uniform block than a hard-boiled egg could, because the white was not curved around a yolk and could be sliced flat. The instruction to keep the water off the boil is the whole skill of it, and reflects a kitchen where heat was managed by moving the pan rather than turning a dial. The habit is generally placed in the same moment as elaborate moulded aspics and the chafing dish, when a hostess was expected to produce something that looked composed as well as tasted well.