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Matelote of Eggs
Put one pint of either red or white wine in a stewpan, the wine having been diluted with one-third its quantity of water. Chop up an onion, mix it with a little pepper, salt, a bunch of sweet herbs and one clove of garlic and boil in the wine for five minutes; strain, put it back in the saucepan and poach ten eggs in it. Arrange the eggs on a dish when done. Thicken the wine with butter rubbed in flour, stir over the fire until the flour has cooked, pour over the eggs, and serve.
A poached-egg dish built on the fish-stew logic of a matelote: eggs stand in for the fish, and the wine court-bouillon becomes the sauce. The whole thing takes fifteen minutes once the pan is on.
- The hinge: keep the wine below a simmerPoach at 180-185F, with the surface barely trembling. A rolling boil will shred the whites into the wine and leave you with ragged eggs and cloudy sauce.
- Quantities as writtenOne pint is 2 cups of wine, diluted with a third again as much water, about 2/3 cup, for roughly 2 2/3 cups of liquid (the wording could also be read as a pint of already-diluted wine). That is not a deep bath: use a pan narrow enough to give an inch or two of liquid, and poach the ten eggs in batches rather than in one wide shallow pan.
- Stewpan and saucepanOscar uses the two words for the same vessel: a broad, straight-sided pan. Width matters more than depth here, since ten eggs need room not to collide.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni, tied so it can be lifted out: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf. Tie it rather than chop it, since the liquid is strained in any case.
- Timing the eggsThree to four minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. Slide them in from a cup, one at a time, and lift them out with a slotted spoon in the order they went in. Use the freshest eggs available; older whites spread.
- Red wine will stainWhites poached in red wine come out mottled violet-grey. This is expected in a matelote and the sauce is dark to match, but white wine gives a paler, more conventional-looking plate.
- The thickeningButter rubbed in flour is beurre manie: equal parts soft butter and flour worked to a paste, about 2 tablespoons of each for this volume. Whisk it in off the heat in small pieces, then return to the fire and cook two or three minutes until the raw flour taste is gone, as the recipe directs. Reducing the poaching liquid by a third first will give a sauce with more flavor, though the recipe does not call for it.
- Yield and servingTen eggs serve five as a first course or lunch dish. It is worth setting each egg on a croute of butter-fried bread, as the sauce is loose and the bread keeps the plate from flooding.
A matelote is a French freshwater-fish stew braised in wine with onion, garlic and herbs, the name generally traced to matelot, sailor or boatman, and associated with the river inns of the Loire, Marne and Seine. Dishes called "matelote of eggs" or oeufs en matelote appear through nineteenth-century French cookery as the meatless, fish-less version of the same idea: the wine court-bouillon carries the whole flavor, and poached eggs take the place of the eel or carp. That it turns up in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection reflects how thoroughly the Waldorf kitchen ran on French method under an American roof, and how useful an egg dish was on a hotel menu that had to feed Lenten and light-supper orders as well as banquets.