No. 2512

Garnishing of Eggs, Polish Style

Garniture d'Oeufs a la Polonaise

Cut in small dice the cooked meats of some lobster claws, add to this salpicon the same quantity of oysters poached in white wine and half as much salt, cucumber or gherkin, and beside this the white of seven or eight hard-boiled eggs, also cut up in small dice; season the salpicon with oil, vinegar and mustard, and let macerate for one hour; drain on a sieve and return it to the same vessel to combine with some mayonnaise (No. 606). Dress this preparation in a small croustade, smooth the top and decorate with the egg-yolks pounded with a little ravigote butter (No. 583) pushed through a cornet.

← No. 2511 Garnishing of Eggs, Moscovite Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2513 Garnishing of Decorated Quartered Eggs →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold salpicon bound with mayonnaise, piped over with tinted yolk butter — one of the several dozen egg garnishes Ranhofer lists for cold buffet work. The whole thing hangs on the oysters and on draining the marinade thoroughly.

Oysters, two minutes at mostPoach the shucked oysters in barely simmering white wine only until the edges ruffle, 1 to 2 minutes, then lift them out. Held longer they tighten into rubber and will not dice cleanly.
SalpiconThe word means nothing more than an evenly diced mixture bound with sauce. Cut everything to a uniform 1/8 to 1/4 inch dice; the point of the dish is that no single component dominates a spoonful.
ProportionsRead it as equal parts lobster and oyster by volume, half that of pickle, plus the whites of seven or eight eggs. Roughly 1 cup lobster, 1 cup oysters and 1/2 cup diced gherkin; the recipe specifies only a "small croustade", so scale the case to the quantity you have.
"Salt cucumber"A brined dill-style cucumber, not a fresh one and not a sweet pickle. Cornichons or an unsweetened dill gherkin are the closest supermarket equivalents; drain and blot them or the mayonnaise will thin.
Macerate, then drain hardThe hour in oil, vinegar and mustard is a marinade, not a dressing. Tip it into a sieve and let it sit several minutes before adding mayonnaise, otherwise the acid and shellfish liquor will break the sauce and the croustade will go soggy.
CroustadeIn Ranhofer's kitchen this is a case of fried bread or baked pastry rather than the modern shallow tartlet shell; such cases served hot fillings as often as cold. A blind-baked short pastry case or a hollowed, butter-fried bread box both work; fill it only when serving.
Ravigote butter and the cornetRavigote butter is softened butter worked with blanched herbs (chervil, chives, tarragon, watercress) pounded to a green paste. Sieve the hard yolks first, then beat in the butter so the mixture pipes; a cornet is a paper piping cone, and a small piping bag with a fine tube does the same job.
Raw egg in the mayonnaiseNo. 606 is an uncooked emulsion and this dish is never heated. Use pasteurized eggs if serving the very young, the elderly or anyone pregnant, and keep the finished garnish refrigerated until it goes to the table.
YieldA component of a garnished cold platter rather than a main dish; the recipe gives no serving count.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its long runs of numbered garnishes reflect the way a large nineteenth-century kitchen actually worked: a cold buffet was assembled from stock preparations cross-referenced by number, so No. 2512 leans on a mayonnaise at No. 606 and a compound butter at No. 583 rather than repeating them. The tag a la polonaise attached itself in French professional cookery to dishes finished with sieved hard-boiled egg — most familiarly asparagus or cauliflower under egg, parsley and browned crumbs — and the sense here is the same, with the yolks piped rather than scattered; the association with Poland is traditional and its origin is not documented. Lobster and oysters together in a diced, dressed salpicon says something about the period's American larder as well: oysters were still cheap and abundant in New York, ordinary enough to be treated as filler in a garnish for eggs.