No. 2507

Garnishing of Eggs, Barrel-Shaped

Garniture d'Oeufs en Forme de Baril

Cut off both ends of seven or eight shelled hard-boiled (eggs imitate the shape of a small barrel); empty them from top to bottom with a small tin tube, and fill up the hole with a salpicon of lobster and truffles mingled with a thick mayonnaise (No. 606); lay them on a baking sheet, and let stand on ice for half an hour. On removing them, decorate the sides with thin fillets of anchovies, dipped in half-set jelly, and cover over the top platform with a pyramid of chopped jelly.

← No. 2506 Garnishing of Eggs a la Rouennaise Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2508 Garnishing of Hard-Boiled Eggs, Basket-Shape →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-buffet garnish from Ranhofer's Delmonico repertoire: hollowed hard-boiled eggs stuffed with lobster salpicon and dressed with anchovy and chopped aspic. Nothing here is difficult, but almost every step depends on temperature control.

The hinge: everything must stay coldThe jelly sets and the mayonnaise holds only if the eggs, the filling and the working surface are chilled. Ranhofer's "let stand on ice" is best approximated today by refrigeration at 40F or below, and the finished garnish is better returned to the cold until service than left waiting on a sideboard.
"Shelled" means peeledIn nineteenth-century American cookbooks shelled eggs are eggs with the shell removed, not eggs still in it. Older eggs peel more cleanly than very fresh ones; cook 10-12 minutes, cool in ice water, and peel under running water.
The small tin tubeA narrow tinned coring tube. An apple corer or a 1/2-inch round pastry cutter tube does the same job, pushed straight down through the trimmed egg to remove yolk and core in one plug.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply ingredients cut into small even dice, here cooked lobster meat and truffle. Cut about 1/8 inch so the mixture packs into the narrow channel; bind with only enough mayonnaise to hold it, or it will weep.
Mayonnaise No. 606Ranhofer's plain mayonnaise, made with raw yolks and oil. Because the finished garnish is never cooked, use pasteurized eggs or a good commercial mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon, and keep the assembled eggs refrigerated.
Half-set jelly and chopped jellyBoth come from a clear aspic. Half-set is the tacky stage at which it coats without running; chopped jelly is fully set aspic cut through with a knife to make glittering crumbs. Modern equivalent: a well-clarified stock set with gelatin, about 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin per 2 cups.
Anchovy filletsSalt-packed anchovies of the period were generally rinsed and filleted before use. Blot oil-packed fillets and cut them into narrow strips to read as the barrel's hoops.
Yield and useSeven or eight eggs, from a section headed "Garnishings for Cold Dishes," were meant to dress a cold platter rather than stand as a course; they are edible, but they are built to be looked at first.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) devotes an entire section to garnishings for cold dishes, and this is a fair sample of what a Delmonico's buffet demanded: an egg carved into a cooper's barrel, hooped with anchovy and crowned with chopped aspic. The style belongs to the high grande-cuisine tradition Ranhofer brought from France, where a cold table was judged on architecture as much as flavor, and where aspic served both as glue and as glaze. Salpicon of lobster and truffle marks it as a luxury garnish rather than an economy for leftovers, though the technique of hollowing hard-boiled eggs and refilling them is older and much humbler. The section numbering here, with recipes running in sequence from eggs a la Rouennaise to eggs in basket shape, reflects the book's function as a working reference for professional kitchens.