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Married Eggs
Blanch eight artichoke bottoms, then cook them in some gravy. Make a preparation with four hard-boiled eggs chopped up very fine, mix in plenty of very finely-chopped fine herbs that have been parboiled in hot water, add three raw egg yolks, salt, a little cayenne pepper and a little tomato sauce; mix all together well and cover the artichokes with this, smooth the surface nicely with the blade of a knife, strew with breadcrumbs and melted butter and set them in the oven for four minutes. Arrange them systematically on a dish, and serve.
A French hot hors d'oeuvre rendered into English: stuffed artichoke bottoms under a browned crumb crust. Two things in the original need attention — the raw yolks in the filling and the four-minute oven time, which together assume a fiercely hot oven.
- The hinge: heat the filling throughThree raw yolks bind the stuffing, so the crumbed tops must be baked until the filling is set and hot at the centre, not merely browned. The recipe gives no oven temperature; four minutes implies a very hot oven with the artichokes and filling already warm from the gravy. If your components have cooled, allow considerably longer at a moderately hot oven and check that the middle is hot.
- "Gravy"In cookery of this period gravy generally means meat juices or a light brown stock rather than a thickened flour sauce. Simmer the blanched bottoms in a few ladles of veal or chicken stock until tender, and reduce what is left to glaze them.
- Artichoke bottomsEight bottoms means eight large globe artichokes trimmed down to the fleshy base, choke scraped out — an hour's work. Frozen or good jarred bottoms are the honest substitute; drain and simmer them briefly in the stock rather than blanching first.
- Keep them from blackeningTurned artichoke bottoms oxidise within minutes. Rub with lemon and hold in acidulated water, and blanch in water with lemon juice and a spoon of flour if you want them pale.
- "Fine herbs"This is fines herbes: parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon in roughly equal parts. "Plenty" is unquantified; a generous handful, chopped, suits four eggs. The parboiling here softens the herbs and sets their colour; a brief dip and a hard squeeze dry is enough, and chives and tarragon are better added raw.
- Tomato sauce"A little" is genuinely unquantified — start with a tablespoon or two of thick sauce. Too much and the yolks cannot hold the filling together when it heats.
- Crumbs and butterFine dry breadcrumbs, strewn thinly, then melted butter drizzled over. Under the broiler for the last minute if the tops are pale.
- YieldEight bottoms serve four as a first course, or eight on a mixed hors d'oeuvre plate. The recipe assumes they go out hot and immediately.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, compiled his 1896 Cook Book largely from the professional French repertoire that hotel kitchens of the day ran on. Artichoke bottoms were a standard hotel garnish rather than a vegetable in their own right: cases to be filled with purees, salpicons or egg mixtures, arranged in rows on a long dish and sent out as a hot hors d'oeuvre. The instruction to "arrange them systematically" is a small window onto the period's service, where a brigade with a coal range at full blast could indeed brown crumbs in four minutes.