No. 2515

Garnishing of Hard-Boiled Eggs, Vase Shape

Garniture d'Œufs Durs en Forme de Vase

Cut off a third of the length of the egg; use the most rounded end for the upper part and the pointed end for the base; stick these two parts together with white chaudfroid (No. 596); take out the yolk and replace it by chopped jelly (Fig. 494).

← No. 2514 Hard-Boiled Eggs Stuffed with Salpicon Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2516 Garnishing of Whole Hard-Boiled Egg-Yolks →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-buffet garnish rather than a dish: two trimmed sections of hard-boiled egg cemented together with sauce to make a small footed vase, filled with chopped aspic. Success rests entirely on clean cuts and firm, well-chilled eggs.

The hinge: cold, firm, slightly stale eggsEggs must be fully hard-cooked, cooled through, and peeled without tearing; a warm or soft-centred white will slump and refuse a clean edge. Eggs a week or two old peel far more cleanly than very fresh ones.
Reading the geometryCut across the egg so that about a third of its length is separated off. Ranhofer assigns the rounded end to the upper part and the pointed end to the base; the yolk cavity of the larger piece is what gets hollowed and filled. Exactly how each piece is stood, and whether the tip of the foot needs trimming to sit level, the text leaves to the cook and to Fig. 494.
Chaudfroid as glueThe recipe sends you to Ranhofer's No. 596, his white chaudfroid: broadly a white sauce base carried with aspic and cream. Use it at the point where it has thickened to a coating consistency but has not set; a spoonful of stiff, gelatin-set sauce will not bond. A thin smear on both cut faces, then chill until firm, holds the two pieces together.
Chopped jellyThis is clear savoury aspic, set hard, then chopped fine with a cold wet knife. Chop it at the last moment and keep it cold, or it weeps and clouds. A well-clarified stock set with gelatin gives the sparkle the effect depends on.
The yolksThe recipe has you take the yolk out and put chopped jelly in its place, but says nothing about what becomes of it. The neighbouring numbers in this section will take it -- sieved yolk, stuffed whites, or a mayonnaise binding.
Holding and servingThese are decoration for a cold platter, galantine, or aspic-lined dish rather than a course in themselves. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead and keep refrigerated; chaudfroid and aspic both soften noticeably in a warm room.
ToolsA thin-bladed knife dipped in hot water gives the cleanest cut through white. A small melon baller or a demitasse spoon hollows the bowl without cracking it.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to a long run of garnishing formulas in which hard-boiled eggs are turned into architecture — baskets, cups, vases, mushrooms — for the cold buffet. That style descends from French cuisine froide of the nineteenth century, where the garde-manger was a distinct station and its work was judged as much on carving and glazing as on flavour. Chaudfroid sauce, the coating that makes such construction possible, is generally traced to eighteenth-century French practice and takes its name from being made hot and served cold. The whole idea of a table dressed with sculpted aspic and coated meats reached its fullest expression in the era between Carême and Escoffier, and pieces like this vase were the small change of that grammar: quick to produce in quantity, identical from one plate to the next, and dependent on gelatin at a time when it had only recently become reliable and cheap enough to use freely.