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Washington Eggs
Toast eight round slices of bread and lay them on a dish, cut some fresh tomatoes across in two, fry in butter and put a half on each slice of toast, on top arrange a round slice of sweet peppers. Lay two poached eggs on every one of the prepared toasts, and pour cream sauce mingled with tomato sauce around.
A composed egg dish from Oscar's breakfast and luncheon repertoire, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen that assumed both sauces were already standing on the stove. Read it backwards and make the sauces first.
- The hingePoached eggs wait for nothing. Have the toast, tomatoes, peppers and both sauces hot and ready, then poach at the last moment and assemble immediately.
- YieldEight rounds of toast with two eggs each: sixteen eggs, serving eight at breakfast or four as a substantial luncheon.
- Rounds of toastCut the bread with a 3-inch cutter before toasting so each round matches the tomato half. Firm white sandwich bread or a cut-down brioche slice holds the sauce without collapsing.
- Frying the tomatoesUse firm, slightly underripe tomatoes, cut through the equator, seasoned and laid cut-side down in foaming butter. Three to four minutes a side over medium heat; longer and they slump off the toast.
- Sweet peppersThis may mean canned or bottled pimientos, or a fresh red pepper. A ring cut from a red bell pepper works, but blanch or saute it briefly first, since raw pepper stays crunchy against the eggs.
- Cream sauceA thin béchamel: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, about 1 1/2 cups milk or half milk and cream, seasoned with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg. It should coat a spoon but still pour.
- Mingled with tomato sauceRoughly three parts cream sauce to one part tomato, whisked together off the heat, gives a pale coral sauce of the classical aurore type. Add the tomato gradually and stop when the color is salmon rather than red.
- PoachingBarely simmering water with a splash of vinegar, three minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Lift onto a towel to drain before setting the eggs on the toast, or the sauce will thin.
Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, worked in an era when hotel cooks turned out dozens of near-identical egg dishes distinguished only by their garnish and sauce, each christened for a person, a city or a patron: eggs Benedict, eggs Meyerbeer, eggs a la Russe. "Washington" here reads as a label rather than a claim of origin, and the pairing of cream sauce tinted with tomato is close to the classical sauce aurore, named for its dawn color.