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Stewed Eggplant
Peel some young, tender eggplant, and cut them into convenient-sized pieces: put them in a saucepan with a good-sized lump of butter, season to taste with salt and pepper, and toss them over the fire for a quarter of an hour, then pour in as much plain stock freed from fat as will reach to half their height, and boil them gently until they are quite tender. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire, and stir in quickly the yolk of an egg that has been well beaten with the juice of a lemon and strained, and add about one tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley. Place some slices of hot buttered toast onto a hot dish, turn the eggplant onto it, and serve at once.
A straightforward braise finished with an egg-and-lemon liaison, in the manner of a Greek avgolemono. The only tricky moment is the last one.
- The hinge: the yolk must not boil"Move the saucepan to the side of the fire" means shifting the pan away from direct heat to a cooler part of the range; on a modern stove, take it off the burner. Beat the yolk with the lemon juice, temper it with a spoonful or two of the hot cooking liquid, then stir it in away from the heat. Much above about 180F the yolk curdles and the sauce breaks.
- "Toss them over the fire for a quarter of an hour"This is a sauté in butter over medium heat, stirring often, to soften the cubes and drive off water before the stock goes in. Fifteen minutes is realistic if the pan is not crowded; work in two batches rather than steaming a heap.
- Butter quantityThe recipe says only "a good-sized lump"; something on the order of 2 to 3 tablespoons per medium eggplant is a fair reading. Eggplant absorbs fat readily at first and gives some back as it collapses, so resist adding more in the first few minutes.
- Young, tender eggplantOscar assumes small, thin-skinned fruit with pale seeds. Supermarket globe eggplant is larger and can be bitter and spongy; choose firm, glossy specimens that feel heavy, or use slender Japanese or Italian varieties. Salting and draining for 30 minutes is worth doing with a large older fruit, not with small ones.
- "Plain stock freed from fat"An unseasoned light chicken or veal stock, skimmed. Canned broth is saltier than a nineteenth-century kitchen stock, so hold back on the salt until after the liquid reduces. Liquid to half the height of the eggplant is roughly 3/4 to 1 cup per pound.
- Cooking to "quite tender"Ten to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer, uncovered so the stock reduces to a few spoonfuls of sauce. If it is still soupy when the eggplant is soft, lift out the vegetable and reduce the liquid before adding the yolk.
- Strain the yolk mixtureThe instruction is not fussiness. Straining removes the chalazae and any bits of set white, which would show as threads in the finished sauce.
- Toast and timingThe toast is there to catch the sauce, and it goes limp within minutes. Butter it and plate it while the liaison is going in, and serve immediately as directed.
- YieldOne medium eggplant with one yolk serves two as a lunch or supper dish, or four as a vegetable course alongside roast meat.
Eggplant reached American tables slowly; through much of the nineteenth century it was often grown as an ornamental curiosity as much as a vegetable. By the time Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms at the turn of the century it was a standard hotel vegetable, usually fried in slices or stuffed. What marks this version is the finish: yolk beaten with lemon juice and stirred in off the heat is the technique behind Greek and Turkish avgolemono sauces, and enriching a sauce with beaten yolk off the heat was familiar French kitchen practice as a liaison. Serving a soft, saucy vegetable over buttered toast was a common way to give it body and make it a course in its own right, a habit generally associated with American hotel and household cooking well into the twentieth century.