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Eggs with Piquante Sauce
Chop up fine one pickled pepper, one teaspoon of capers, one-half small pickled onion and one pickle, and some parsley. Dissolve in boiling water one tablespoon of butter, add the juice of one-half of lemon, a pinch of flour to give a little body, and the chopped pickles. If too sour add some sugar. Hard boil four eggs, cut them in four, and pour over them the sauce. Eggs "alla Monachile" Hard boil four eggs, divide them in half, and pour over them the following sauce: Put two tablespoons of vinegar into a saucepan and one tablespoon of sugar (brown or white), fifteen almonds chopped up fine, and a small piece of candied citron. Let it boil for a little while, then add a pinch of cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and salt, and if too acid add a little water. Before taking off the stove add a little flour to give body to the sauce. Pour over the eggs and serve.
Eggs "alla Fiorentina" Hard boil four eggs. Let them cool in a bowl of cold water. Peel them and divide them in half. Take the yolks and mix with them one heaping tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of Parmesan cheese grated, and a little salt and pepper. Put this mixture into a saucepan with the yolks of two raw eggs, and one-half of the white of one egg. Stir well until the mixture becomes thick. Then fill the hard-boiled whites of the eggs with the stuffing; if any stuffing remains over, spread it on the platter under the eggs. Then put one-half cup of milk in a saucepan with one-half tablespoon of butter and one-half tablespoon of flour, salt, and pepper. Boil for a few moments, stirring well, then pour over the eggs, sprinkle well with grated Parmesan cheese, and put in the oven and brown.
Three sauces for hard-boiled eggs, printed as one entry. Each dresses four eggs and serves two as a light lunch or four as an antipasto.
- The missing water measurement"Dissolve in boiling water one tablespoon of butter" gives no quantity. About one-third cup is right for four eggs — enough to coat, not to flood the plate. Add it gradually and stop when the sauce clings to a spoon.
- A pinch of flour will not thicken anythingIn the first two sauces the flour is there for body, and thrown dry into hot liquid it will lump. Work it into the butter first, or slake it in a spoonful of cold water before stirring it in, then let the sauce bubble a minute to lose the raw taste.
- Pickled pepper and pickleThe pepper is a whole pickled sweet or mildly hot pepper from a jar, not a peppercorn; the "pickle" is a cucumber pickle, and a sour gherkin suits better than anything sweet. Together with the capers and onion they should be chopped to caper size so the sauce spoons evenly.
- Candied citronSold in the baking aisle around the winter holidays and otherwise scarce. Candied orange or lemon peel is the nearest substitute; use a piece about the size of a hazelnut, minced, or the citrus note dominates the whole dish.
- The almond sauce is agrodolceTwo tablespoons vinegar to one of sugar is deliberately sharp. Use wine vinegar rather than distilled, and taste before serving — the recipe's own instruction to thin with water is the correction you will most likely need.
- Hard-boilingTwelve minutes in water at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, as the Fiorentina version says. Longer gives the grey-green ring and a sulphurous edge that fights all three sauces.
- The stuffing needs low heatThe mashed yolks with butter, Parmesan and two raw yolks are a custard. Stir over the lowest heat, or in a bowl over simmering water, until it thickens and no further; scrambled bits cannot be smoothed out again.
- Browning the FiorentinaBrowning -- Once sauced and dusted with Parmesan, the eggs need colour and nothing more. The recipe gives neither temperature nor time: a hot oven, or a couple of minutes under a broiler, watching it. The eggs are already cooked, so extended baking only toughens the whites.
Hard-boiled eggs under a sharp sauce are old Italian household cooking, and the second of these three is the most telling: vinegar, sugar, almonds, candied citron, cinnamon and cloves is an agrodolce of the kind that runs through Renaissance Italian cookery, when sweet and sour together and spice in savoury dishes were the mark of a good table rather than a curiosity. The name "alla Monachile" points to convent kitchens, which had a long association with almonds, candied peel and sweetened preparations; such attributions in cookbooks are traditional rather than documented. "Alla Fiorentina" here means stuffed and gratinated, a different tradition — the yolks enriched with butter and Parmesan, returned to their whites and finished under a béchamel, a treatment close to what English and American books of the period generally described as eggs au gratin.