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Egg Balls for Turtle Soup
Put the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs into a basin, break them up and mix them with the yolk of a raw egg. Form the paste into small balls, plunge them into a saucepan of boiling water and let them remain for two minutes to get hard. They are then ready for use.
A garnish, not a dish: firm egg-yolk dumplings the size of a marble, dropped into clear turtle soup at the moment of serving. The whole thing turns on the binding, so work the yolks smooth before the raw yolk goes in.
- Get the paste truly smoothPress the hard yolks through a fine sieve rather than mashing them in the basin. Any lump becomes a crack, and a cracked ball disintegrates in the water and clouds the soup.
- The raw yolk is the only glueOne raw yolk to three cooked is about right, but yolk sizes vary. Add it in stages until the paste holds a shape without being tacky; if it slumps, a pinch of flour steadies it.
- SizeRoll them no larger than a small hazelnut, about half an inch. Anything bigger will not set through in two minutes and will be soft at the centre.
- Barely boiling waterBring the pan to a boil, then drop the heat so the surface only shivers before the balls go in. A rolling boil knocks them apart. Two minutes at a bare simmer is enough at this size.
- Season the pasteThe recipe as printed calls for no seasoning; other period egg-ball recipes usually add salt and a little nutmeg or cayenne. Unseasoned yolk in a highly seasoned turtle soup tastes flat.
- Yield and useThree yolks make a couple of dozen small balls or more, depending how large you roll them. Lift them out with a slotted spoon, hold them in warm salted water or broth, and put them in the plate before the soup is poured.
- Beyond turtle soupEgg balls appear regularly in mock turtle soup as well, and they work in any clear soup that wants a little richness without a starchy dumpling.
Egg balls are a fossil of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century turtle cookery, when real green turtle soup was among the most expensive things a kitchen could send out and was expected to arrive with a set of traditional accompaniments: the calipash and calipee, forcemeat balls, a glass of Madeira or sherry at the table, and these small yolk dumplings. Recipes for them appear in English household books well before Oscar Tschirky was born, and they carried over intact into mock turtle soup, made from a calf's head, a dish still current in 1896 when The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf was published. Green sea turtles are now protected and the parent dish has effectively vanished from restaurant menus; the egg balls, which need nothing rarer than eggs, are the part of it a modern cook can still put on the table.