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Omelet with Fine Herbs
Break two eggs into a basin, mix in a shallot, a little each of thyme, marjoram, basil, chervil and parsley, and sprinkle in a very little pepper. Melt one ounce of butter in a pan on the fire and let the butter cover the pan, and, taking care that it does not burn, when it is at the boiling point place in the omelet and fry to a golden brown.
Eggs on Toast Toast six or eight pieces of bread without crust, cut square, butter them and place on a dish. Put a poached egg on each, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve hot.
Eggs, Parisian Style Mask the whole of the insides of as many small dariole moulds as may be required (the moulds having been previously set on the ice) with warmed half-glaze; make a mince of equal parts of truffles, ham or tongue and sprinkle over the insides of the moulds so as to adhere to the glaze and break an egg into each one, taking care not to damage the yolk; sprinkle them over with salt and pepper and put in a low saucepan with boiling water to half their height; then put the pan in the oven for five or six minutes to poach the eggs, pour them out onto a dish, pour a little gravy seasoned with chopped parsley over them, and serve.
Eggs, Peasant Style Pour into a dish one breakfast cupful of cream; when boiling break in twelve eggs, season with salt and twelve whole peppers; cook for ten minutes; set in the oven for about three minutes until the eggs get a golden color, taking care that they do not harden. Remove them from the oven, place the dish on another, and serve.
Four egg preparations run together in a single block of type, as they do throughout Oscar's book. Each is workable, but the seasoning and vessels need translating.
- The herbs are the pointFines herbes means fresh chervil, parsley, tarragon and chives in classic French usage; Oscar's list of thyme, marjoram and basil is heavier. Use them fresh and chopped fine, about a tablespoon total for two eggs, and mince the shallot to near-paste so it softens in the brief cooking.
- Salt is missingThe omelet recipe seasons with pepper only. Add salt to the beaten eggs — roughly a scant quarter teaspoon for two — or the herbs will taste flat.
- An ounce of butterThat is two tablespoons for a two-egg omelet, generous by modern habit but correct for a hot pan that must not stick. "At the boiling point" means the foam has subsided and the butter is just beginning to smell nutty; past that it browns.
- "On the fire"Simply the stovetop. An eight-inch pan suits two eggs; medium-high heat, and the whole thing is done in under two minutes.
- Dariole moulds and half-glazeDarioles are small cylindrical metal moulds, roughly two to four ounces — ramekins or timbale cups substitute. "Half-glaze" is demi-glace, a reduced brown sauce; a good reduced veal or beef stock does the same job of coating the chilled mould so the truffle and ham mince sticks.
- Oven-poaching in a water bathThe pan of boiling water reaching halfway up the moulds is a bain-marie. The book gives no oven temperature; five or six minutes in a moderate oven will set the whites of eggs in small moulds while the yolks stay soft. Watch them rather than trusting the clock, since mould thickness changes everything.
- Eggs, Peasant StyleA breakfast cupful is a generous cup. Twelve eggs broken into simmering cream and cooked ten minutes will be well past soft unless the heat is very low — treat it as the gentlest possible poach, and the three minutes in the oven only to color the tops. The recipe leaves the twelve whole peppers whole and says nothing about removing them.
- YieldThe omelet serves one. Eggs on Toast serves three or four. Parisian Style is counted by mould, one or two per person; Peasant Style, at twelve eggs, feeds six.
Oscar Tschirky was never actually a chef — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, the front-of-house figure whose name carried the hotel's reputation — and his 1896 volume reads as a compendium of the professional French repertoire as it was practiced in New York's grand hotels. The four egg dishes here map that world neatly: an omelette aux fines herbes and eggs à la parisienne straight from the Escoffier-era brigade, alongside eggs on toast for the American breakfast trade. "Peasant style" is the sort of name hotel kitchens gave to a rustic-sounding preparation that in practice used a cupful of cream and a dozen eggs; the pairing of the two extremes on one page is characteristic of the book, which was assembled less as a teaching text than as a record of what a large kitchen could be asked to send out at any hour.