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Egg Balls for Soup
Pound in a mortar one teaspoonful of ham or tongue; add the yolk of a hardboiled egg, a little boiled and finely-minced parsley and a seasoning of grated nutmeg and cayenne. When well-mixed, add the yolk of a raw egg and form the mass into small balls; plunge these into a saucepan of boiling milk, poach for two or three minutes, add them to the hot soup for which they are made, and serve.
A soup garnish rather than a dish in itself: a stiff forcemeat of hard-boiled yolk and cured meat, bound with raw yolk and set by brief poaching. The quantities are indicative rather than exact, which is normal for a garnish of this kind.
- The hinge: poach gentlyThe milk should be at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, or the balls break up before the raw yolk sets. Two to three minutes is enough; they are done when firm to a light press.
- Proportions are looseOne teaspoon of pounded ham to one cooked yolk makes only a few marble-sized balls. To serve six or eight, scale up to roughly 4 cooked yolks and 4 teaspoons ham or tongue, adding raw yolk a little at a time (one may be enough) so the mass stays stiff enough to roll.
- Mortar or processorPounding ham to a paste in a mortar takes real effort; a small food processor or a fine mince followed by mashing with the cooked yolk through a sieve gives the same smooth texture. The mixture must be dry and clay-like, not sticky.
- If the mass will not holdAdd sieved cooked yolk or a spoonful of fine dry breadcrumbs rather than more raw egg. Chilling the shaped balls for 15 minutes before poaching also helps them keep their shape.
- SizeKeep them the size of a small marble, about 1/2 inch. Anything larger is unwieldy on a soup spoon and cooks unevenly in three minutes.
- Seasoning"A seasoning of grated nutmeg and cayenne" means a pinch of each. Tongue and ham are already salty, so check the mixture for salt before the raw yolk goes in.
- ServingAdd the drained balls to the hot soup at the moment of service; held in the soup they soften and cloud it. Suited to clear consommes, mock turtle and other brown soups, not to thick purees where they disappear.
Egg balls belong to the large family of nineteenth-century soup garnishes. In English and American cookbooks they appear most often alongside mock turtle soup, where they stand in for the turtle's eggs, and the same forcemeat logic underlies veal balls, marrow balls and the German Eierstich. Poaching in milk rather than stock or water keeps the balls pale.