Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Baked Eggs
Baked Eggs
Boil eight eggs in a saucepan of water until quite hard; when cool remove the shells. Cut the eggs up into slices; put these at the bottom of a stewpan and pour over them a few tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce reduced with a little gravy; place the lid on the pan and set it in the bain-marie or in another large saucepan half-filled with boiling water. Boil about four handfuls of finely-minced noodles in a saucepan with salted water; then take out, drain and return them to the saucepan. Add seasoning, a quarter of a pound of butter, two or three tablespoonfuls of bechamel sauce and one teacupful of grated cheese (Parmesan preferred). Mix thoroughly and pour about three parts of the mixture on a dish; make a hollow in the center, pour in the egg-mixture, and over these the remainder of the noodle-mixture. Smooth the surface with a knife, sprinkle with a little grated Parmesan cheese, then pour over a small quantity of melted butter, bake for a quarter of an hour, and serve.
Eggs, Bar-le-duc Toast some slices of bread and trim them round-shaped; on each one lay a well-cooked artichoke bottom, and over this drop a poached egg; cover the whole with some good brown tarragon sauce, and serve.
A hot-water-bath egg and tomato filling layered inside buttered, cheesed noodles. The verbatim text runs a second recipe, Eggs Bar-le-duc, onto the end of the first; treat them as separate dishes.
- The hinge: keep the eggs off direct heatThe sliced hard eggs go into a covered pan set in a bain-marie precisely so they only warm through in the sauce. Hard-cooked whites held over a burner turn squeaky and weep water.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, and the text gives no oven term from which one could be inferred. All the components go in already cooked, so the quarter-hour is only about browning the top and heating through; a hot oven is implied, but any specific figure is the cook's own choice.
- "Four handfuls" of noodlesGenuinely ambiguous. Judge by volume against the filling: roughly 8 oz dry egg noodles gives about the right ratio to eight eggs. "Finely-minced" means short-cut noodles, not a puree.
- TeacupfulA teacup in this period is smaller than a modern measuring cup, but the value was not fixed: sources range from a gill (about 1/2 cup) to about 3/4 cup. Taking the larger end gives roughly 2 to 2 1/2 oz of grated Parmesan.
- A quarter pound of butterFour ounces into roughly 8 oz of noodles is very rich by modern habit. Halving it will not break the dish.
- Tomato sauce "reduced with a little gravy"Gravy here means reduced brown stock or the juices from a roast, not flour gravy. A few tablespoons of concentrated tomato sauce loosened with veal or beef stock does the job; the mixture should coat, not pool.
- BechamelTwo or three tablespoons is a binder for the noodles, not a sauce course. Make it thick and let it cool slightly before mixing so it clings.
- YieldEight eggs and half a pound of noodles serves four to six as a luncheon dish.
- For the Bar-le-duc eggsArtichoke bottoms are the trimmed base of a globe artichoke; canned or frozen bottoms are the practical substitute. Poach the eggs soft so the yolk runs into the tarragon sauce.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf dining rooms from 1893, and this recipe shows the kitchen's French training applied to homely material: hard-boiled eggs and noodles handled with a bain-marie, bechamel and a gratin finish. The Bar-le-duc name that follows belongs to the town in Lorraine best known for its seeded-currant preserve, though nothing here involves fruit.