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Eggs with Cream
Chop some cold chicken very fine, season to taste. Take a poacher and put a little of the chicken over the bottom of each compartment, depress it in the center and break into each, one egg; poach in water until quite set. Place on a dish with a folded napkin and serve with thick cream sauce.
A tidy use for leftover roast chicken, built around a piece of equipment most kitchens no longer keep. Everything hinges on the egg cups and on the sauce, which the original assumes you already know how to make.
- The poacherA lidded pan with a perforated insert holding shallow metal cups, set over or in simmering water; depending on the pattern the eggs may cook by steam rather than in the water itself, though the recipe says "in water." Butter each cup well or the chicken layer will weld to the metal. Failing that, use buttered ramekins in a covered pan with an inch of simmering water.
- "Poach until quite set"About 4 to 5 minutes covered gives a set white and a soft yolk; 6 to 7 minutes sets the yolk through. The chicken beneath insulates the base, so the underside lags behind the top.
- Thick cream sauceThe original assumes a standard cream sauce of the period: a roux-based white sauce, roughly 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk or chicken stock, finished with a few tablespoons of cream and seasoned with salt and white pepper. It should be thick enough to sit on the egg, not run off the dish.
- Seasoning the chickenCold cooked chicken is bland and dry. Salt, white pepper and a spoonful of the cream sauce or a little melted butter worked into the mince keeps it from turning to sawdust under the egg.
- The depression in the centerPress the chicken into a shallow nest with the back of a spoon so the egg sits in it rather than sliding off. This is the step that makes the dish hold together when turned out.
- The folded napkinA folded cloth under poached eggs both dresses the dish and takes up water draining from them, so the sauce is not thinned on the platter. A warmed plate lined with a folded linen napkin still does the job; so does simply draining each egg on a towel first.
- YieldOne or two eggs per person; a four-cup poacher, a common size, serves two as a light luncheon or breakfast course. Figure about half a cup of chopped chicken for four eggs.
Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, and the book that carries his name (1896) reflects what a large New York hotel kitchen produced at the close of the century — which is why it contains many near-identical egg dishes, each differing only in the garnish beneath and the sauce over. Eggs cooked in individual buttered cups on a bed of minced meat belong to a French repertoire that American hotel cooking drew on; a related idea appears in period French manuals as oeufs moulés. It is tempting to read the dish as a way of using the trim left from a carved roast, though the book does not say so, and a folded napkin was a common form of service for poached dishes.