No. 2506

Garnishing of Eggs a la Rouennaise

Garniture d'Oeufs a la Rouennaise

Divide in two lengthways seven or eight shelled hard-boiled eggs; take out the yolks to pound and rub through a sieve. Harden on a small baking sheet on ice a layer of fine jelly, having it a quarter of an inch thick; from this cut out with a heated pastry cutter eight oval crusts, having them two and a quarter inches long by one and a quarter inches wide; form rings of these with a narrower pastry cutter, and detach them from the pan by warming it underneath; dress them in a rosette on a cold dish and keep it on ice. Fill the half eggs with a salpicon of cooked duckling fillets mixed with mushrooms and a brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594) mixed with soubise sauce (No. 543); smooth the preparation into domes, and cover the eggs entirely with a thin layer of white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596). When this is quite cold, decorate the surfaces with fanciful cuts of truffles and with strings of pounded egg-yolk mixed with chaudfroid; lay one egg inside of each jelly ring.

← No. 2505 Garnishing of Eggs a la Justine Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2507 Garnishing of Eggs, Barrel-Shaped →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold buffet garnish from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system, where half the ingredients are recipes elsewhere in the book. Everything hinges on temperature control: the aspic must be set hard and the chaudfroid must be at coating consistency at the same moment.

The hinge: chaudfroid consistencyA chaudfroid is a velouté or brown sauce fortified with enough gelatin or reduced aspic to set. It coats properly only in a narrow window, when it is cool and thickened to the consistency of heavy cream but not yet setting. Too warm and it runs off the eggs; too cool and it goes lumpy. Keep the bowl over tepid water and stir, and coat the eggs while they are cold from the refrigerator so the sauce grips on contact.
"Fine jelly" means aspicA clear savoury gelatin made from strong veal or poultry stock, clarified and set firm enough to cut and handle. It needs to be noticeably firmer than a table jelly to survive being lifted with a cutter — figure on a stiff set, poured a quarter inch deep on a chilled sheet pan.
Heated cuttersDipping the pastry cutter in hot water and wiping it dry gives a clean edge through set jelly instead of a torn one. Warming the underside of the pan for a few seconds releases the rings; a thin offset spatula, chilled, moves them without fingerprints.
Salpicon and soubiseA salpicon is simply a fine, even dice of cooked ingredients bound with sauce. Soubise (No. 543) is an onion purée sauce; a small amount of well-cooked onion purée folded into the brown chaudfroid gives the same effect. The duckling fillets are the cooked breasts, skin removed, cut small.
Truffle decorationThe "fanciful cuts" were stamped from thin slices of black truffle with tiny aspic cutters. Truffle at this quantity is now an expensive flourish; a blanched black olive or a sheet of dark truffle paste spread thin and chilled cuts the same shapes for a fraction of the cost.
Piping the yolkSieved hard-boiled yolk slackened with a little chaudfroid pipes cleanly through a very fine plain tube while the sauce is still fluid, and holds its line once it chills. Make it in a small quantity and work fast, or it sets in the bag.
Yield, and the arithmeticSeven or eight eggs give fourteen to sixteen halves, but only eight jelly rings are cut and one egg goes in each. The surplus halves are either coated for a second platter or, more likely in a professional kitchen, held as spares against breakage — assume eight finished pieces per dish.
Holding and servingAssembled pieces should go back to the coldest part of the refrigerator and be served within a few hours. Aspic weeps as it warms and the chaudfroid dulls; this is a garnish built for a buffet table that will be cleared, not one that keeps.

A Little History

This is one of a long run of egg garnishes in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to the grand cold-buffet tradition Ranhofer inherited from Carême and Urbain Dubois: food built up in layers of aspic and chaudfroid, decorated with cut truffle, and arranged on the platter as geometry. The name points to Rouen, whose ducks gave French cookery a whole family of dishes labelled à la rouennaise, and the duckling salpicon here is the reason for the tag. The style tells you what a Gilded Age banquet actually demanded: dishes that could be assembled hours ahead by a brigade with an ice room, look architectural under gaslight, and be eaten cold at a standing supper. Almost nothing in the entry is described in full, because Ranhofer expected his reader to have the book's three sauces — brown chaudfroid, soubise, and white chaudfroid — open at their numbered pages.