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Carrots and Eggs
Make the same preparation as above, for the sauce, with the same seasonings, but add a dust of nutmeg. Then add half a pint of white stock which will be enough for a small bunch of carrots; simmer them for fifteen minutes and then break in three whole eggs, taking care that they fall apart from each other. Let them cook till nearly set (for they will go on cooking in the hot sauce after you remove them from the fire) and serve at once. This is nearly as good if you use old carrots sliced, instead of the young ones.
A one-pan dish of carrots stewed in a light sauce with eggs poached directly in it. The original leans on a preceding recipe for its base, so a little reconstruction is needed before you start.
- Half a pint of stockThis is a British book of 1915, so the imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ cups. American measure gives 1 cup. Either works; add the smaller amount and loosen later if the sauce tightens.
- White stockAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, made from bones blanched rather than roasted, so the sauce stays pale. Any light chicken stock will do; avoid dark or heavily reduced commercial demi-glace.
- The hinge: keep it below a boilOnce the eggs go in, the sauce must stay at a bare tremble. A rolling boil shreds the whites and drives them into the carrots instead of leaving three distinct poached eggs.
- Break them apart"Taking care that they fall apart from each other" means spacing the eggs around the pan so they set as separate portions. Crack each into a cup first and slide it in at a different point of the surface.
- Carrot timingFifteen minutes suits small new carrots left whole. Older carrots sliced into coins will want the same or slightly less; they should be tender before the eggs go in, since the eggs need only three to four minutes.
- CarryoverThe instruction to pull them off while nearly set is sound. The hot sauce keeps cooking the whites and yolks in the pan and again on the plate, so err on the loose side.
- YieldThree eggs and a small bunch of carrots feeds two as a light main course, three as a side. Serve straight from the pan with bread; the sauce does not hold.
- Soft yolksThe yolks are meant to stay runny. Anyone cooking for the very young, the elderly or the immunocompromised should use pasteurised eggs or cook them through.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion of 1914, and it is generally described as having been published in aid of Belgian relief. That origin suits the character of a dish like this one: carrots, a spoonful of flour, a little stock and three eggs make a whole supper out of almost nothing, cooked in a single pan on a single burner. Eggs poached directly in a savoury base are common across northern European and French provincial cooking, and nutmeg with carrots and butter is a seasoning much used in the Low Countries, though hardly unique to them. The note that old sliced carrots serve nearly as well as young ones reads as the voice of a cook writing in wartime, when the choice was rarely available.