No. 2858

Hard-Boiled Eggs a la Bennett

Œufs Durs a la Bennett

Boil eight eggs hard, the same as for Aurora (No. 2857); shell and lay them in tepid water until needed. Mince eight ounces of white onions, blanch for a few moments in salted water, drain and wipe on a cloth; lay these in a saucepan on a fire with melted butter; fry slowly while stirring until they be cooked, then season with salt, pepper and nutmeg; thicken with bechamel (No. 409), having reduced it with a little mushroom broth and melted meat-glaze (No. 402); add as much minced mushrooms as onions, and an ounce of fresh butter, and then drain the eggs, wipe and cut them crosswise, remove the yolks, press them through a sieve and mix well with the sauce. This sauce must be succulent but not too thick; strain it through a tammy. Dress the white parts in layers intercalated with the onion and the mushroom stew and pour the sauce over.

← No. 2857 Hard-Boiled Eggs and Aurora Eggs & Omelets No. 2859 Hard-Boiled Eggs a la Benoist →

For the Modern Kitchen

A soubise-and-mushroom dish from Delmonico's kitchen: the egg whites are layered with a thick onion-mushroom stew, and the sieved yolks go into the sauce as its thickener and body. The cross-references are to other numbered entries in the same book, all of them replaceable with standard modern preparations.

The hinge: sauce consistencyThe sieved yolks will tighten the béchamel considerably once stirred in, so the sauce should look slightly loose before they go in. Ranhofer's "succulent but not too thick" means it should coat and slide, not mound; thin it with a little more mushroom broth if it stiffens.
Meat-glaze (No. 402)Glace de viande is brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon of good commercial demi-glace concentrate, or homemade brown stock boiled down until it coats a spoon heavily, does the same work. It is there for savour, not thickening.
Béchamel (No. 409)A conventional milk-based white sauce made with a butter-and-flour roux. The original gives no quantity; roughly a cup, on the thick side, is a workable amount for eight eggs, and since it is then reduced with the mushroom broth and glaze, start slightly thinner than a gratin sauce.
Mushroom brothA standard preparation in professional kitchens of the period: the liquid from cooking mushroom trimmings. Simmer stems and peelings in lightly salted water for 15 minutes and strain, or use the strained soaking liquid from dried mushrooms, which is stronger and should be used sparingly.
Blanching the onionsEight ounces of minced white onion, dropped into salted boiling water for a minute or two, loses its raw bite and cooks down faster in butter afterward. Dry it well on a cloth or the butter will spit and the onions will steam rather than sweat.
TammyA tammy was a worsted cloth through which sauce was wrung with two people twisting the ends. A fine-mesh conical strainer, pressed with a ladle, gives the same smoothness.
Hard-boiling and holdingThe tepid-water hold in the original keeps the whites from firming up cold and rubbery before assembly, but it also parks cooked eggs in the temperature range bacteria like. Shell them and hold in hot tap water for no more than half an hour, or simply cook them close to serving time.
Yield and serviceEight eggs serve four as a first course. The layered whites are dressed in a shallow gratin dish or on individual plates; nothing goes into the oven, so both the sauce and the onion-mushroom stew must be hot when they meet the eggs.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is stuffed with dishes named for the restaurant's patrons \and dozens more sit in alphabetical file like a guest list. What the dish itself preserves is an older French idea: onions cooked slowly in butter and bound with b">soubise, and here the pur\an equal weight of mushrooms. Using the sieved yolks to enrich and thicken the sauce, then rebuilding the whites in layers, is characteristic of the period's approach to hard-boiled eggs, which were treated less as a plain food than as a vehicle for a sauce that had cost some trouble.