For the Modern Kitchen
A composed egg dish from Ranhofer's kitchen, built in layers: marrow toast, ham, a trimmed fried egg, tomatoes and Madeira sauce. Nothing is difficult, but everything must be ready at once, so assemble in order and cook the eggs last.
- Eggs au miroirThe name refers to the glossy, unbroken surface of the white — the egg is cooked gently on one side only, never flipped, then basted or briefly glossed in the oven so the top sets to a shine. If the white browns or blisters, the effect is lost; keep the pan at moderate heat and use clarified butter to baste.
- MarrowBeef marrow from split leg or canoe-cut bones, soaked in cold water to draw out blood and chopped; some cooks poach it briefly first. Ask a butcher for marrow bones; two or three large ones should give enough for six toasts. Marrow melts fast, so the toasts go into the "hot oven" the recipe calls for only long enough to soften it — a few minutes at around 400F.
- Meat glazeRanhofer's No. 402 is glace de viande — brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon of good reduced veal or beef stock, or a scant teaspoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate, does the same work of binding and glossing the ham.
- Raw hamHere "raw" means uncooked cured ham, not fresh pork — prosciutto, speck or a dry-cured country ham. Cut it in the specified eighth-inch dice; anything larger reads as chunks rather than a garnish. Lard is used first because it takes higher heat without browning the butter, which goes in only at the finish.
- The tomatoesThe instruction to garnish with tomatoes arrives without any earlier mention, the kind of shorthand that recurs in The Epicurean, where garnishes are often carried over between neighbouring recipes. Small tomatoes halved and sautéed in butter, or thick slices seasoned and briefly roasted, are reasonable choices.
- Trimming the eggsCutting each cooked egg with the same 2.5-inch round used for the bread is the point of the dish's neatness. Fry the eggs in individual rings or small blini pans and they will need almost no paring; trim on a plate, not in the pan, and lift with a thin offset spatula.
- YolksAn egg au miroir is served with a liquid yolk, which is what carries the Madeira sauce. Anyone cooking for someone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised should use pasteurized shell eggs or cook the yolks through and accept the loss of effect.
- Yield and timingFigure one toast per person as a first course, two as a light main; the recipe scales by the toast. Have the marrow toasts, ham and tomatoes hot and the sauce at hand before the first egg goes into the pan — the whole assembly takes under two minutes and cannot wait.
A Little HistoryCharles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system committed to print, which is why so many recipes are numbers pointing at other numbers. Œufs au miroir belongs to a long French run of egg dishes named for their appearance — the white left smooth and glazed rather than lacy or folded — and the book carries a whole series of them, each distinguished only by garnish. The suffix "à la Tivolier" follows the nineteenth-century restaurant habit of attaching a name to a set of garnishes, in this case marrow toast, diced raw ham and Madeira; such names generally honored a patron, a colleague or a fashionable place, and in most cases the specific reference is no longer recoverable. Beef marrow spread on toast, now unusual on American menus, was then everyday luxury cooking, prized for richness at a time when no part of an expensive animal went unused.