No. 2911

Eggs on a Dish, Bienvenue

Œufs sur le Plat a la Bienvenue

Lay through a pocket on the inside edge of the basin of a dish a border made of potato croquette preparation (No. 2782) softened with an egg; fill the center of this border with a bed of duxelle or cooked fine herbs (No. 385); break over some raw eggs without injuring the yolks, season with salt and pepper, and put in the center of the yolks; dredge with grated Swiss cheese, pour on some butter and cook the eggs in a hot oven. Serve as soon as removed.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has potato croquette mixture and duxelles standing by, and he assumes an egg dish that goes from oven to table. Read as a modern recipe, the whole thing hinges on not overcooking the eggs once the border and the mushroom bed are ready.

"Through a pocket"The pocket is a pastry bag. Pipe the potato mixture in a raised ring around the inner rim of a shallow ovenproof egg dish so it forms a wall that keeps the whites from spreading.
Potato croquette preparationNo. 2782, a mashed-potato mixture of the duchesse type. Slackening it with a whole egg, as directed here, makes it soft enough to pipe cleanly.
DuxelleFinely chopped mushrooms cooked down with shallot and parsley until dry. It must be nearly moisture-free, or the liquid will weep under the eggs and slacken the whites.
A hot ovenRoughly 400-425F is a reasonable modern reading; Ranhofer gives no figure. Butter and warm the dish first so the whites begin to set from below while the top colours.
TimingSix to eight minutes for whites just set and yolks still liquid. Ranhofer gives no time; pull the dish when the whites lose their transparency, since carryover heat in a hot metal or earthenware dish keeps cooking the eggs on the way to the table.
Grated Swiss cheeseGruyere, or Emmental. Use a light dredging only over the whites and border, not over the yolks, where it will form a skin.
A garbled line"put in the center of the yolks" is missing its object in the original setting, and what was meant is unclear. Either omit it or read it as a small addition (butter, or a little of the duxelle) at the centre of each yolk.
YieldThe recipe specifies no number of eggs, only "some"; it scales by the dish rather than by the batch. Two eggs in one shallow dish is a sensible single first-course portion.

A Little History

Oeufs sur le plat are simply eggs baked and served in the same shallow dish, a format that let a kitchen send out something hot and individually composed with very little labour once the garnishes were prepared in advance. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled several pages of The Epicurean (1894) with variations on it, each distinguished only by what goes under or around the eggs, as here with a piped potato border enclosing duxelles and cheese. The name Bienvenue means simply "welcome," and like many of Ranhofer's garnish names it appears to be house nomenclature rather than a dish with an independent pedigree; such titles were often coined for a patron, an occasion, or a private dining room. The construction is characteristic of the book's method, where numbered cross-references to a stock of standard preparations do most of the work, and the recipe proper is little more than an assembly note.