No. 2927

Poached Eggs a la Mirabeau

Œufs Poches a la Mirabeau

Prepare a cooked foies-gras and cut seven or eight oval-shaped slices of the same dimensions as the poached eggs; pound the parings of liver with two pounded raw peeled truffles, season and add a spoonful of raw chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and two egg-yolks; put this into a strong paper cornet and push it through to form a high string all around the upper edges of the slices of foies-gras. Range these on a small raised baking sheet, having the bottom covered with a thin layer of half-glaze sauce (No. 413) reduced with Madeira wine; keep for two minutes in a slack oven to warm the liver and poach the forcemeat. Remove and dress in a circle on a dish, placing a poached egg on each one; heat at the oven door while basting over with good veloute sauce (No. 415).

← No. 2926 Poached Eggs a la Bourguignonne—Baked Eggs & Omelets No. 2928 Poached Eggs a la Villeroi →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A Delmonico's garnish dish: a slice of foie gras becomes the plinth for a poached egg, with a piped forcemeat border baked in place. Most of the work is in the two cross-referenced sauces and the forcemeat, so read those numbers first.

The hinge: the forcemeat must actually cookThe piped border contains raw chicken forcemeat and two raw egg yolks, and "two minutes in a slack oven" (a low oven) will not set it, let alone bring it to a safe 165F. Give the border enough time and heat to firm and cook through before the poached eggs go on top, and check with an instant-read thermometer at the thickest point of the piping.
"Cornet" and pipingA paper cornet is a cone rolled from stiff paper or parchment, used like a small piping bag. A small plain tip in a disposable bag does the same job; the mixture should be stiff enough to hold a raised rim without slumping.
"Raised baking sheet"Ranhofer means a rimmed sheet or shallow gratin pan, deep enough to hold the thin film of sauce underneath the slices without it running off.
Oven temperaturesThe book works in words, not degrees. Slack or slow is conventionally read today as something like 275-300F, moderate as 350F, quick as 425-450F, but these are modern equivalents rather than figures Ranhofer gives. Warming at "the oven door" means the mouth of the open oven, roughly what a low broiler position or a 200F oven does now.
Cooked foie grasHe assumes a whole cooked terrine or pâté de foie gras to slice from, with parings left over for the forcemeat. A block of duck foie gras mi-cuit slices cleanly if chilled hard and cut with a hot knife; it will soften quickly at oven heat, so keep the slices cold until they go in.
TrufflesTwo raw peeled truffles was an unremarkable seasoning in a Gilded Age restaurant kitchen and is now the single most expensive line in the recipe. The recipe does not name a variety, though "raw peeled" points to fresh rather than preserved; preserved truffle peelings give the color and some of the aroma, truffle oil gives neither.
The two saucesNo. 413 is demi-glace, here reduced with Madeira and used only as a thin glazing film under the slices; No. 415 is velouté, a light chicken-stock sauce thickened with a pale roux, spooned over at the end. Both can be made ahead; the velouté should be loose enough to coat rather than blanket.
Yield and serviceSeven or eight portions, one egg each, arranged in a ring on a single platter. It is a first course or a supper dish, and it has to go to the table immediately: the foie gras weeps if held and the eggs stiffen.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style at its most characteristic — a poached egg treated as the excuse for foie gras, truffle, demi-glace and velouté all in one plate. The name is a puzzle: in the classic French repertoire à la Mirabeau almost always means anchovy, with anchovy butter, anchovy fillets, stoned olives and tarragon, and it is generally said to honor the revolutionary orator Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau. Ranhofer's version has no anchovy at all, which is a useful reminder that nineteenth-century garnish names traveled loosely between kitchens and were often reassigned by whoever was writing the menu. What is consistent is the structure: the numbered cross-references to forcemeat and mother sauces mean no dish in this book stands alone, and a cook working from it was expected to have a station's worth of preparations already made.