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Egg Cromeskies
Boil until hard, six eggs, and when cold, peel off the shells; mix together three tablespoonfuls of sifted breadcrumbs, three dessertspoonfuls each of chopped parsley and onion, a teaspoonful and a half of mixed herbs and a seasoning of pepper and salt, and sprinkle this over six slices of lean bacon, each slice three inches wide and eight inches long, Place a hard-boiled egg on each, roll the bacon around the egg, and fasten with pieces of string of small skewers. Bake in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour.
A Victorian savoury that survives at the Waldorf as a baked dish rather than the fried croquette the name implies. Nothing here is difficult, but the bacon does the structural work and the proportions of it matter.
- Moderate ovenRead this as roughly 350F. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat is enough to render the bacon and set it around the egg; the eggs are already cooked, so the time is entirely about the wrapper.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons, i.e. two-thirds of a tablespoon. Three of them is about two tablespoons each of chopped parsley and onion, which is a generous amount of raw onion for six eggs — mince it very fine or sweat it briefly first.
- Mixed herbsUsually a dried blend along the lines of thyme, marjoram and sage, sometimes with rosemary or parsley. Any dried Italian-style mix is a fair substitute at the same quantity.
- Bacon dimensionsThree inches wide and eight inches long describes a hand-cut rasher from a slab, noticeably wider than most supermarket bacon though not really longer. Use two standard slices per egg, overlapping them into a cross, or ask for a thick single cut from a butcher.
- Getting the crumb mixture to staySprinkling it over the bacon loses most of it in the pan. Press the seasoned crumbs onto the damp peeled egg first, then wrap; the bacon fat binds it as it renders.
- FasteningCotton kitchen twine or wooden toothpicks both work. Remove them before serving, and set the parcels seam-side down on a rack over a sheet pan so the rendered fat drains and the underside crisps.
- The eggsTen minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives firm yolks that still slice cleanly after baking. Older eggs peel far more easily than very fresh ones.
- YieldSix parcels, one per person as a luncheon or supper dish, halved lengthwise if served as a savoury course or cold with mustard.
The name is a corruption of kromeski or cromesqui, generally traced to Polish and Russian cooking by way of the French professional kitchen, where the word attached itself to a small roll of forcemeat or minced cooked meat wrapped in something fatty — a thin slice of bacon, or in the grander nineteenth-century versions calf's udder — then dipped in batter and deep-fried. Escoffier and his English contemporaries list cromeskies among the hot entrées and savouries. The version often attributed to Oscar Tschirky drops the batter and the frying kettle altogether and bakes the parcels, which puts it very close to the Scotch egg tradition.