No. 2926

Poached Eggs a la Bourguignonne—Baked

Œufs Poches a la Bourguignonne au Gratin

Boil water in a saucepan; add salt and a dash of vinegar. Crack six very fresh eggs and drop them slowly in a deep dish, keeping them whole; slip them into the boiling water, and when done, and found to be of a proper consistency, remove them with a skimmer, and transfer to cold water; pare each one singly. Butter thoroughly a baking dish, bestrew it with bread-crumbs and then a layer of grated parmesan; pour over butter, and lay on the eggs; mask them with a well-seasoned bechamel sauce (No. 409), sprinkle with grated parmesan and butter, and bake in a hot oven. When done strew over some chopped fine herbs and squeeze over the juice of a lemon.

← No. 2925 Poached Eggs a la Boeldieu and Eggs a la Ben Eggs & Omelets No. 2927 Poached Eggs a la Mirabeau →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method poaches the eggs in advance, holds them in cold water, then finishes them as a gratin — which means the oven stage is about browning, not cooking. Everything hinges on keeping the yolks soft through two heatings.

Poach at a bare simmer"Boil water" is loose language: a rolling boil shreds the whites. Bring the salted, vinegared water to a boil, then drop it back to 180–185F, just trembling, before sliding the eggs in. Three minutes gives a set white and liquid yolk.
"Pare each one singly"This means trimming the ragged skirts of cooked white off each poached egg with a small knife or scissors once it is cold and firm, so the eggs sit neatly in the dish. It is the reason for the cold-water step and is worth doing.
A hot ovenRead this as roughly 400–450F, and keep the dish in only 5 to 8 minutes — long enough to glaze the parmesan. The eggs are already cooked; a longer bake gives you hard yolks. A broiler for two minutes does the same job with more control.
Warm the eggs firstEggs straight from cold water will chill the sauce and force a longer bake. Slip them into hot (not boiling) salted water for 30 seconds and drain on a towel before dressing the dish.
The bechamelNo. 409 in this book is the flour-and-butter white sauce. About one cup of medium-thick bechamel masks six eggs; if it is thin it will slide off them and pool.
Fine herbs"Fine herbs" here is fines herbes — chopped parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon in roughly equal parts. Parsley and chives alone are an acceptable substitute; add them after baking, as directed, or they blacken.
Butter "poured over"Butter -- butter appears twice, poured over the crumb-and-cheese base and again with the parmesan on top before baking; melted butter is meant in both places. A tablespoon in each is plenty.
YieldSix eggs serves three as a lunch or supper course, or six as one plate in a longer menu. The dish must go to the table straight from the oven.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered, cross-referenced entries were meant to be worked as a system rather than read straight through — hence the bare pointer to bechamel at No. 409. The name is the puzzle: a la bourguignonne normally signals red wine, and eggs poached in Burgundy with a wine sauce are the far better-known dish of that name. Here the wine has vanished entirely and what remains is a parmesan gratin, a reminder that nineteenth-century restaurant garnish names could be attached loosely to a dish rather than describing a region's cooking. The technique itself — poach ahead, hold in cold water, trim, reheat under a sauce — has the look of service kitchen thinking, though the reasoning behind it is a matter of inference rather than record.