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Eggs with Asparagus
Take some asparagus tops, chop into small pieces about the size of peas, and boil them, take them out, put into another saucepan with a little butter, chives and a small quantity of parsley, set the pan over a rather slow fire, add a little water, flour and salt and sugar to taste, and let them cook until quite done; arrange on a dish with a few eggs broken over, and season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Put the dish on a hot stove, cook the eggs with a hot salamander, keeping the yolks soft, and serve in the dish they were cooked in.
A gratin of chopped asparagus bound with a light butter-and-flour sauce, with eggs set on top under fierce overhead heat. Everything depends on the heat coming from above, so the yolks stay liquid while the whites set.
- The salamanderA salamander was an iron plate on a handle, heated red in the fire and held over a dish to glaze or set the surface. Your equivalent is the broiler on its highest setting with the rack close to the element; watch it constantly, as the whites set in two to four minutes.
- Cook and serve in one dishUse a shallow oven-safe gratin dish or a cast-iron skillet, buttered. The instruction to serve in the dish it was cooked in is practical: the eggs continue to set on the way to the table and lifting them out will break the yolks.
- Boiling the asparagus topsPea-sized pieces of tender tip need two to three minutes in salted water, no more, then a quick drain. Many nineteenth-century recipes call for far longer boiling than modern taste wants, and the asparagus gets a second cooking in the butter afterwards in any case.
- "A little water, flour"This is an unmeasured light binding sauce, and the recipe gives no quantity of asparagus at all. As a working starting point, for about 1 lb of asparagus tips use roughly 1 tablespoon of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter, loosened with 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water or stock until the vegetable is coated rather than swimming.
- The sugarSalt and sugar "to taste" is best read here as a pinch of sugar to lift the asparagus rather than to sweeten it; add it sparingly and taste as you go.
- A rather slow fireLow heat, around a bare simmer. The point is to soften the chives and parsley into the butter without browning the flour, which would tint the sauce and dull the green.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the eggs at the last moment; pre-ground nutmeg has largely lost the volatile oils that make the pairing with butter and egg work.
- YieldFigure two eggs per person and about 1 lb of asparagus for four. The original gives no quantities at all.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms at the Waldorf from its opening in 1893 and published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896; he was famously a maitre d'hotel rather than a chef, and the book reads as a compilation of the hotel kitchen's working repertoire alongside standard household fare. This dish belongs to the large family of European egg gratins finished under overhead heat, a technique that survived in restaurant kitchens long after the domestic salamander itself disappeared, which is why the modern appliance mounted above a professional range still carries the name. Asparagus was a seasonal spring vegetable, and using only the tender tops means the woody stalks are set aside.