No. 2912

Eggs on a Dish, Conde

Œufs sur le Plat a la Conde

Through a pocket provided with a channeled socket form a border of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and baking forcemeat (No. 81), well mixed together, laying it in the inside of the basin of the dish. Butter the bottom of this dish, season with salt and pepper, and break in a sufficiency of eggs without disturbing the yolks; strew the whites with duck's liver cut in one-eighth of an inch squares, and over the whole scatter grated parmesan cheese; pour on some butter and cook in a hot oven. Garnish around with three-quarters of an inch round chicken croquettes.

← No. 2911 Eggs on a Dish, Bienvenue Eggs & Omelets No. 2913 Eggs on a Dish, Creole Style →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's œufs sur le plat are baked in the shallow dish they are served in, and the whole point is a set white with a liquid yolk. Everything else here — the piped forcemeat rim, the foie gras, the croquettes — is garnish built around that.

The hinge: watch the whites, not the clockEggs baked in a buttered dish need only 8 to 12 minutes; pull them when the whites are just opaque and the yolks still tremble. A minute past that and the yolks chalk over, which ruins the dish no matter how good the forcemeat border is.
"A hot oven"Probably somewhere in the 400-450F range, though Ranhofer gives no figure here. For eggs it is safer at 400F on an upper rack, or start the dish on the stovetop until the whites begin to cloud and finish it in the oven.
"Through a pocket provided with a channeled socket"A pastry bag fitted with a star tip. The border is piped around the inside rim of the shallow baking dish before the eggs go in, so it cooks with them and holds its ridges.
The two forcemeatsNo. 89 is the chicken quenelle forcemeat and No. 81 the "baking" forcemeat the recipe names. A quenelle forcemeat of this period is typically pounded raw chicken with panada, egg and cream, and a baking forcemeat firmer so as to hold its shape. Mixed, they pipe cleanly and set rather than slump. A stiff mousseline of raw chicken breast, egg white and a little cream, seasoned and chilled, does the same job.
Duck's liverIn this kitchen it most likely meant foie gras, cooked or in terrine form, diced small. Ordinary duck liver is leaner and more mineral; either works, but the fat in foie gras is what makes the dice melt into the whites. It goes on raw eggs and cooks only as long as they do, so use liver that is already cooked.
Season the whites, not the yolksSalt sprinkled directly on a yolk leaves pale speckles where it draws moisture. Butter and season the dish first, as written, and salt the whites once the eggs are in.
The croquette garnishThree-quarter-inch rounds of chicken croquette mixture, breaded and fried, arranged around the dish at the last moment. Fry them ahead and hold them in a warm oven; they are inedible once they have sat on a hot egg dish and gone soft.
YieldThe original leaves it open. Figure one shallow gratin dish, two eggs, per person, with the border and garnish scaled to each dish rather than one large platter shared out.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows how that kitchen worked: a simple thing — eggs baked in a buttered dish — is dressed with three separate sub-preparations that a brigade already had standing by, each cross-referenced by number. The suffix names in this chapter (Bienvenue, Conde, Creole) work more as labels for garnish combinations than as descriptions of technique, and à la Condé in nineteenth-century French cookery is generally traced to the princely house of Condé, applied loosely to rich, formally garnished dishes without any documented link to a particular recipe. The foie gras and quenelle forcemeat mark this as restaurant rather than family cooking.