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Eggs in Cocottes
Take some small china cups (called cocottes) and break a new-laid egg in each with a little butter; sprinkle over a little salt and pepper, set them on hot ashes and salamander the tops until the eggs are done and quite soft. Serve in the cups.
Two short sentences of instruction hide two pieces of vanished equipment: the bed of hot ashes and the salamander. Both are heat sources, one from below and one from above, and reproducing that split is the whole trick.
- What a cocotte isA small straight-sided porcelain or earthenware cup of about 4 to 6 fl oz, what a modern catalogue calls a ramekin. Oscar's "china cups" are not teacups; they need to take direct heat and a broiler without cracking.
- Hot ashesRaked ashes, whether at an open hearth or banked at the edge of a range, gave gentle bottom heat. A shallow pan of hot water on the stovetop, the cups standing in it with the water an inch up the sides, is a workable equivalent, as is a water bath in a moderate oven of about 325F -- a temperature the recipe itself never gives.
- Salamander the topsA salamander was an iron plate on a handle, heated red and held above food to brown or set the surface. Use a broiler element or a kitchen torch instead, close and brief, only to set the whites on top.
- TimingWhites set and yolks still liquid takes roughly 6 to 9 minutes over water, plus under a minute of top heat. "Quite soft" is the instruction that matters; carryover heat in a hot china cup keeps cooking the egg after it leaves the stove, so pull them while they still look underdone.
- The butterPut a small knob in each cup and let it melt before the egg goes in, so the egg does not weld itself to the porcelain. A teaspoon per cup is plenty. Some versions of the dish add a spoonful of cream over the top before the top heat, though this one does not.
- New-laid eggsFresh eggs hold a tight, high yolk and a thick white that will not spread thin in a small cup. Buy the freshest available; the age difference is visible in the finished dish.
- Yield and serviceOne or two cups per person as a first course or breakfast dish. Serve immediately, in the cups, on a small plate with a folded napkin so the diner is not handed hot porcelain bare, with a teaspoon and dry toast.
Oeufs en cocotte belongs to the French repertoire that Oscar Tschirky worked within at the Waldorf. The salamander in this recipe is worth noticing as a piece of period equipment rather than a metaphor: before overhead gas broilers were standard, browning the top of anything meant a preheated iron held over it, and the tool is associated with open-hearth cookery, where it was also used to crisp the sugar on a burnt cream.