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Egg Balls II
1 "hard-boiled " egg Few grains cayenne 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon heavy cream 1/4 teaspoon finely chopped parsley Rub yolk through a sieve, add white finely chopped, and remaining ingredients. Add raw egg yolk to make mixture of right consistency to handle. Shape in small balls, and poach in boiling water or stock.
A soup garnish rather than a dish: small forcemeat balls of hard-cooked egg bound with raw yolk, poached and dropped into a clear or cream soup at the table. The ingredient list has been scrambled in transcription — the stray "Yolks 2 eggs" at the end belongs with the raw yolk called for in the method.
- The hingeConsistency is everything. Add the raw yolk a little at a time until the mixture just holds a ball without cracking or slumping; too much yolk and the balls disintegrate in the water.
- Poaching, not boiling"Boiling water" here means water brought to a boil and then held at a bare tremble. A rolling boil breaks the balls apart. Two to three minutes is usually enough for balls the size of a hazelnut; judge them by feeling set rather than by whether they float.
- Heavy creamCream sold as "heavy" in this period was not standardised and could be richer than what is bottled today. One teaspoon is a binder, not a flavour, so the difference is minor.
- Few grains cayenneRoughly a pinch — call it 1/16 teaspoon or less. Start small and taste.
- Sieving the yolkPush the cooked yolk through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon rather than mashing it, so the mixture is smooth enough to bind and shape.
- Yield and useOne egg makes only a small number of balls, so scale up for more than a bowl or two. Poach them ahead, hold in warm water or broth, and add to the soup just before serving. Mock turtle soup is the garnish's best-attested home.
- Cook the raw yolkThe raw yolk is fully cooked in the poaching, but do not skip that step and use the mixture as an uncooked garnish.
Egg balls belong to a whole family of Victorian soup garnishes — quenelles, custard royale cut in diamonds, forcemeat balls, marrow balls — whose job was to give a thin soup something to chew and to signal that the kitchen had gone to trouble. They are traditionally said to derive from the egg balls of English mock turtle soup, where the pale round shapes were taken to stand in for the turtle's eggs; by Fannie Farmer's day the garnish was no longer tied to that one soup. One hard-boiled egg was within anyone's reach.