No. 2503

Garnishing of Eggs a la Jardiniere

Garniture d'Oeufs a la Jardiniere

Divide in two crossways fifteen hard-boiled eggs; keep only the halves having the roundest end and cut these off so that they stand upright. Remove the yolks from these halves and scoop the white out lightly, then fill up the hollow with a little finely cut macedoine salad (No. 2650) dressed with mayonnaise (No. 606); smooth them into a dome and put aside on ice, then cover the dome with small carrot and gherkin balls cut in halves; brush over with half-set jelly and dress.

← No. 2502 Garnishing of Eggs a la Develle Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2504 Garnishing of Eggs, Juliette →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A cold-buffet garnish from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen: egg-white cups filled with dressed vegetable salad, studded with vegetable balls and glazed with aspic. The work is all assembly, and the jelly is the part that decides whether it looks like the plate in the book.

The hinge: half-set jellyThe aspic must be cooled to the point where it coats a spoon and just begins to thicken — syrupy, not liquid, not rubbery. Too warm and it runs off, taking the vegetable balls with it; too cool and it goes on in cloudy lumps. Keep a bowl of it over ice water and stir, and rewarm briefly if it sets ahead of you.
Macédoine saladReferenced as No. 2650: a macédoine is a mixture of small-cut vegetables — typically carrot, turnip, green beans and peas — cooked separately until just tender and cooled; check No. 2650 for the exact composition. "Finely cut" here means cut small enough to mound smoothly inside an egg white.
MayonnaiseNo. 606 is a hand-made egg-yolk mayonnaise. Dress the vegetables lightly — enough to bind, not to slump — and drain them well first, or water will weep out and break the aspic glaze.
Vegetable ballsThe carrot and gherkin balls are cut with a small Parisienne (melon-ball) scoop, then halved. Carrot balls should be blanched until barely tender; gherkins can go on raw from the jar, patted dry.
Cutting the shellsFifteen eggs give fifteen usable cups, since only the rounded ends are kept. Trim a bare sliver off the base so they sit level, and scoop the white thin but not through — cold eggs, a week or so old, peel and cut far more cleanly than very fresh ones.
Chilling"Put aside on ice" means thoroughly cold before glazing; a warm filling will melt the aspic on contact. Twenty minutes in the refrigerator is enough, and the finished eggs hold a few hours covered.
Yield and useThis is a garnish, not a course. Fifteen cups will border a large cold platter of salmon, galantine or chaud-froid chicken.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its long chapters of cold garnishes belong to the age of the elaborate buffet, when a centerpiece of cold fish or galantine was ringed with dozens of small identical objects, each glazed to a shine with aspic. À la jardinière — "gardener's style" — is the standard French kitchen term for a garnish of fresh vegetables cut small and cooked separately so each keeps its own color, a usage well established in French cookery long before Ranhofer wrote. The technique on display here, hollowing a food to serve as a container for another and sealing the whole under jelly, was the ordinary grammar of nineteenth-century garde-manger work, and the numbered cross-references to the macédoine and the mayonnaise show how the book was meant to be used: not as a set of standalone recipes but as a system of parts a brigade could combine on demand.