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Poached Eggs for Soup
Put into a saucepan of boiling salted water half a wineglassful of vinegar, keeping it on the side of the fire to boil gently. Break some eggs separately into a cup, pour them gently into the boiling water, cover over the pan and let them remain for three minutes. A few only should be put in at a time. When done take them out with a perforated slice, and plunge them into cold water. Remove, pare them round-shaped and either put them into a tureen with the soup or serve separately on a dish.
A garnish recipe rather than a dish in itself: soft-poached eggs trimmed to neat rounds and dropped into clear soup. The whole technique hinges on water that never actually boils.
- "On the side of the fire"The pan is moved off the direct heat so the water only boils gently, as the recipe directs, rather than rolling hard. Water at a true rolling boil tears the white into rags before it has a chance to set around the yolk.
- Half a wineglassful of vinegarA wineglass in period American cookbooks is about 2 fluid ounces, so this is roughly 2 tablespoons. Use plain white or cider vinegar; anything darker will stain the whites.
- Egg freshness does the real workThe vinegar helps, but a fresh egg with a thick, tight white holds its shape far better than an old one that spreads. Break each egg into a cup first, as directed, so you can see it before it goes in.
- Three minutesThree minutes at a bare simmer gives a set white and a liquid yolk. If the eggs are going into hot soup and will sit a moment, that is right; if you want the yolk merely creamy, go to four.
- The cold-water plungeThis stops the cooking so the eggs can be trimmed and held rather than served straight from the pan. The recipe itself says nothing about reheating them; after paring they go into the tureen with the soup or onto a dish.
- "Pare them round-shaped"Trim the ragged skirts of white with a knife or a round cutter so each egg is a clean disc. This is the difference between a hotel garnish and a poached egg.
- "A perforated slice"A slotted spoon or skimmer. Lift from underneath rather than scooping, so the yolk is not stressed.
- ServingFigure one egg per portion, set into a bowl of clear soup. The recipe offers the choice of putting the eggs into the tureen with the soup or passing them separately on a dish.
Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel whose name fronts this book, ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from the 1890s onward, and the kitchen he documented was a French one working in New York. A poached egg dropped into clear soup is a standard garnish of that tradition, the base of dishes served under names like consomme a l'oeuf poche, and the fussy detail here of trimming each egg into a disc is a hotel habit rather than a domestic one: in a house you eat the egg as it comes, in a dining room every plate must look like every other plate. The instruction to poach in advance, chill, and trim is likewise a service technique, letting a cook prepare dozens of eggs during the afternoon for a dinner rush that would never allow them to be poached to order.