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Little Egg Balls for Stews or Soups
337. Beat three hard yolks of eggs in a mortar, and make into a paste with the yolk of a raw one, roll it into small balls, and throw them into boiling water for two minutes to harden.
Another. Boil three eggs hard, remove the whites, and pound the yolks in a mortar; when reduced to a powder, add the size of three walnuts of butter and a table-spoonful of fine flour. make them into balls the size of marbles.
Two versions of the same garnish: forcemeat balls made entirely from hard-boiled yolk, dropped into soup or stew at the last moment. Both are quick, but they fall apart if the paste is too wet or the poaching water is at a rolling boil.
- The hinge: bare simmer, not boilEgg-yolk balls are fragile and a rolling boil will break them up. Bring the water to the boil, then drop the heat so it barely trembles before the balls go in.
- Hard yolksTwelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives a fully set yolk with no grey ring. Cold yolks pound and sieve far more cleanly than warm ones.
- Mortar substitutePush the cooked yolks through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon rather than using a processor, which tends to smear them into a gummy paste. A sieved yolk is the "powder" the second version asks for.
- "The size of three walnuts of butter"A walnut of butter is roughly half an ounce, so this is about 1.5 oz, or 3 tablespoons. Have it soft, not melted, or the paste will not hold a shape.
- The second version needs cooking tooIt contains a tablespoon of raw flour, which will taste of paste unless it is cooked through. Poach the balls three to four minutes in simmering stock, or add them to the soup that long before serving.
- Season themNeither version mentions salt. Yolk and butter alone are flat; a good pinch of salt, white pepper and a scrape of mace or nutmeg would not be out of place, mace and nutmeg being common in period forcemeats.
- Yield and sizeThree yolks make a small quantity of paste; how many balls you get depends entirely on how large you roll them, and the recipe's 'size of marbles' will give a good many small ones. Make them small enough to be eaten in one spoonful.
- The leftover whitesBoth versions discard the whites. Chopped fine, they make a decent garnish scattered over the same soup, or go into a salad.