No. 2505

Garnishing of Eggs a la Justine

Garniture d'Oeufs a la Justine

Boil hard seven or eight eggs; when very cold, drain and shell. Incrust in pounded ice seven or eight tin molds the shape of half eggs, only just a little wider and higher; coat these with jelly. Cut each egg lengthways in two; take out the yolks and scoop out the whites with a vegetable spoon, leaving only a thin envelope; fill the empty inside of these half eggs with a chicken "pain" preparation (No. 2543), having it lightly buttered. Take up the stuffed eggs one by one on a wide fork passed under the flat side; dip them in a good brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594) reduced with pheasant fumet (No. 397); drain off the sauce and let the eggs cool, then pare the surplus of it, and decorate with thin cuts of truffles and gherkins; now place a half egg in each mold, and pour cold jelly around to fill up the spaces; when cold, unmold and dress in a rosette as a garnishing.

← No. 2504 Garnishing of Eggs, Juliette Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2506 Garnishing of Eggs a la Rouennaise →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold buffet garnish in the classic Delmonico's manner: hollowed egg halves filled with chicken mousse, masked in brown chaud-froid and set in individual aspic molds. Almost everything depends on temperature control rather than cooking skill.

The hinge: sauce temperatureChaud-froid coats evenly only in a narrow window, when it has cooled to the point of just beginning to thicken and coats a spoon in an opaque film. Too warm and it slides off the egg; too cool and it sets in ropes. Keep the bowl over tepid water and stir it back if it stiffens.
"Jelly" means aspicThroughout The Epicurean, jelly is clarified meat or poultry stock set with its own gelatin, seasoned and in some recipes flavored with wine such as Madeira. A modern equivalent is roughly 1 envelope (about 7 g) of powdered gelatin per 2 cups of well-flavored, thoroughly clarified stock, increased if the jelly must hold its shape when unmolded; it must be liquid but cold when poured around the eggs.
Pounded iceCrushed ice, used as a chilling bed. Set the tin molds in a shallow pan packed with crushed ice and a little water so they chill fast and the coating of jelly sets on contact. A sheet pan of ice in the refrigerator does the same work with less mess.
Chicken "pain"No. 2543 is a chicken forcemeat baked in a mold and cooled: pounded breast meat bound with panada or cream and eggs. Any smooth, well-chilled chicken mousse of piping consistency will fill the whites; "lightly buttered" most likely means softened butter worked into the preparation to keep it tender when cold.
Pheasant fumetA reduction of pheasant bones and trimmings used purely as a flavoring for the sauce. A concentrated reduction of roasted game or dark poultry bones is the practical stand-in; the recipe will not fail without it, though the sauce loses its point of difference.
Vegetable spoonA small scoop, what a modern kitchen calls a melon baller or Parisienne scoop. Work carefully: the white must be left as a thin shell, and hard-cooked whites tear easily if the eggs are less than thoroughly cold.
Cooking the eggsRanhofer assumes the cook knows the drill. Twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into ice water, gives a firm yolk without the gray ring and makes the shells release cleanly. The eggs must be refrigerator-cold before they are cut.
Yield and holdingSeven or eight eggs give fourteen to sixteen decorated halves, enough to ring a large cold platter. Because the whole assembly is served cold and built by hand, keep it refrigerated until service and do not leave it on a buffet more than about two hours.

A Little History

This is one of a long alphabetical run of egg garnishes in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Numbered garnishes like this one existed to be cross-referenced: the cook was expected to jump from No. 2505 to the chicken pain at No. 2543, the chaud-froid at No. 594, and the pheasant fumet at No. 397, assembling a dish out of the house's standing repertoire of preparations. The name is decorative rather than descriptive, as with the Juliette and Rouennaise garnishes on either side of it. Chaud-froid itself, literally "hot-cold," is a sauce made hot and served cold, and its invention is traditionally traced to an eighteenth-century French kitchen where a dish had to be eaten cold after an interrupted supper. What the entry really shows is the labor economy of a Gilded Age restaurant: hours of scooping, masking, truffle-cutting and molding, all of it spent on something that would sit around the edge of a platter as an ornament to another dish.