No. 2875

Egg Molded a l'Echiquier—in Cases

Œufs Moules en Caisses a l'Echiquier

Prepare a paste with fresh lobster butter (No. 580), an equal amount of white bread-crumbs, some chopped parsley and half as much cooked and chopped crawfish or lobster tail. With this paste cover the bottom and sides of some round china cases shaped the same as the paper cases shown in Fig. 439, leaving an empty space in the center, and into this break a fresh egg; season and cover with a little butter. Set the cases on a small baking pan containing a little hot water, push it into a slack oven and cook the eggs; pour a little veloute sauce (No. 415), over each egg, having it well buttered with lobster butter, and sprinkle chopped lobster coral over the whole.

← No. 2874 Eggs Molded a la Colbert—in Cases (œufs Moul Eggs & Omelets No. 2876 Egg Molded a la Parisian, Also Called Talley →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked egg in a lobster-butter lining, cooked in a water bath and finished with velouté. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat: the oven is deliberately cool so the white sets without the egg turning rubbery or the lobster butter breaking.

"Slack oven"The coolest working oven in a coal range, usually taken to mean somewhere in the region of 250-300F. With the water bath under them the eggs need a long, gentle bake; watch them rather than trust a clock. Anything hotter and the whites toughen before the yolk warms.
China casesRanhofer means small round porcelain ramekins in the shape of the paper cases pictured elsewhere in the book; he gives no dimensions. Small ramekins of roughly 4 oz work; they need to be shallow enough that the heat reaches the egg quickly.
Lobster butter (No. 580)Not a purchased product. It is made by pounding lobster shells, coral and trimmings with butter, melting the mixture gently, straining, and chilling it so the butter sets above the sediment. Worth making a day ahead, and it should be kept cold until used.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with white stock, simmered and strained; Ranhofer does not say which stock is meant here. Make it thin enough to pour but thick enough to coat, then work in cold lobster butter off the heat. If it boils after the butter goes in it may split.
The lining pasteEqual parts lobster butter and fresh white breadcrumbs, with chopped parsley and half that quantity of chopped lobster or crawfish tail. It should be a spreadable paste at cool room temperature. Press it up the sides in an even layer and leave a real well in the centre, or the egg will sit on top rather than in it.
CoralThe dark green roe of a female lobster, which turns coral red only when cooked. Raw coral sprinkled over the finished dish will look grey-green and taste bitter; dry it in a low oven or poach it, then press it through a fine sieve to a powder.
CrawfishFreshwater crayfish. Cooked crayfish tail meat, or any lobster or langoustine tail, substitutes directly.
Yield and serviceOne egg per case. As a first course at a formal dinner, count one case per person; served as a light lunch, two. They must go to table immediately, since the yolk keeps cooking in the hot porcelain.

A Little History

À l'échiquier means "chessboard," and in nineteenth-century kitchen French the term was generally applied to garnishes laid out in a checkered pattern of contrasting colours — here, presumably, the red coral against the pale velvet of the sauce, though Ranhofer, characteristically, does not explain himself. Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, which is why a single egg dish arrives with two cross-references to other numbered recipes and assumes a lobster butter already standing in the cold room. Molded eggs in cases were a fixture of the elaborate multi-course dinner: small, hot, individually plated, and giving the kitchen a use for the shells and coral left from lobster work elsewhere in the day. Œufs moulés in one form or another run through the French repertoire, and Ranhofer gives them a run of numbered entries, each distinguished only by its lining and its sauce.