No. 2930

Poached Eggs, Matelote

Œufs Poches Matelote

Poach some eggs the same as for poached eggs with gravy (No. 2931); prepare and fry in clarified butter some oval crusts (No. 52) measuring two and a quarter by two and three-quarter inches. Cook in butter one minced onion, add to it a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, and a clove of garlic and mushroom peelings; moisten with red wine and thicken with kneaded butter (No. 579); boil all slowly for half an hour, skim and pass it through a tammy; add small cooked mushroom heads and small glazed onions. Dress the eggs on the fried crusts; range them in a circle, and pour the garnishing in the center.

← No. 2929 Poached Eggs a la Wright Sanford Eggs & Omelets No. 2931 Poached Eggs with Gravy →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stocked garde-manger, so quantities are left out entirely and half the work is hidden behind cross-references. The hinge is the sauce: a red-wine matelote thickened with kneaded butter must simmer slowly and then be strained, or it stays raw-tasting and cloudy.

Scale it yourselfNo quantities are given. For four servings (eight eggs) figure one medium onion, about 2 cups of dry red wine, a handful of mushroom trimmings, and 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons each of butter and flour kneaded together.
Kneaded butterNo. 579 is beurre manié: soft butter worked to a paste with flour, usually in roughly equal weights, whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. Add it a little at a time; the sauce thickens as it comes back to a simmer.
Pass it through a tammyA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people. A fine-mesh conical strainer, or a sieve lined with damp muslin, does the same job.
Mushroom peelingsKitchens of the period saved the trimmings and skins from turned mushrooms as a free flavouring. Chopped mushroom stems work identically; strain them out with the rest.
The half hour of slow boilingThis is not optional padding. Red wine needs that time to lose its sharpness and reduce, and the flour in the kneaded butter needs it to cook out. Skim the surface as it goes.
The crustsNo. 52 is bread cut into shapes and fried; here, ovals of about 2 1/4 by 2 3/4 inches, roughly the footprint of a poached egg. Clarified butter matters because whole butter scorches before the bread colours evenly.
Poaching and holdingPoach the eggs in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar until the whites set and the yolks stay soft, about 3 minutes, then slide them into warm water. Trim the ragged edges before dressing them on the crusts so they sit flat.
Glazed onionsSmall peeled onions cooked in butter, a little stock and a pinch of sugar until tender and shiny. Pearl or small cipollini onions are the modern equivalent; frozen pearl onions are acceptable here since they are sauced.
ServingTwo eggs per person as a first course. Build it at the last moment — the fried crusts soften quickly once the sauce is poured.

A Little History

Matelote is traditionally traced to the French for a sailor's wife or, loosely, a boatman's manner of cooking: a stew of freshwater fish in red wine with onions, mushrooms and a bouquet garni, long associated with the inns along the Seine, Loire and Marne. By the nineteenth century the name had detached from the fish and become a sauce formula in its own right, so that a cook could serve eggs, brains or calf's head en matelote and everyone understood a dark red-wine sauce garnished with button mushrooms and glazed onions. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), lists dozens of poached-egg preparations in exactly this way — each one a standard sauce dropped onto a standard fried crust — which is less a collection of dishes than a demonstration of how a classical kitchen recombined a finite set of parts into an apparently endless menu.