No. 2932

Poached Eggs with Puree of Chicken Supreme

Œufs Poches a la Puree de Volaille Supreme

Poach eight eggs, the same as for those poached with gravy (No. 2931); prepare some croustades, either of bread or paste, and fill them half full with chicken puree (No. 713), having all very hot; lay on the well-drained poached eggs, thoroughly heated at the oven door, and cover with buttered supreme sauce (No. 547).

They can also be prepared with a puree of mushrooms (No. 722), game (No. 716) or truffles (No. 731).

← No. 2931 Poached Eggs with Gravy Eggs & Omelets No. 2933 Poached Eggs with Spinach →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes in cross-references: this entry is really an assembly instruction, and the work sits in the four numbered recipes it points to. Read it as a plated composition — a hot crisp case, a hot purée, a hot egg, a hot sauce — where the only real difficulty is getting all four to the table at once.

The hinge: everything hot at the same momentThe single instruction that matters is having all very hot. A poached egg holds heat for seconds; the croustade and purée must be ready and warm before the eggs go in the water, and the sauce finished and held off direct heat. Ranhofer's trick of warming the drained eggs "at the oven door" is a low, gentle spot — a plate rack above a warm oven, or a shallow tray of 140F water, does the same.
CroustadesEither hollowed rounds of crustless bread fried in clarified butter until golden, or small cases of short or puff pastry baked blind. Roughly 2½ to 3 inches across and deep enough to hold purée plus an egg. Bread cases must be fried close to service or they soften.
Chicken purée (No. 713)A purée of this kind is generally cooked white chicken meat pounded and sieved, then bound with a little velouté or béchamel and cream to a thick, spreadable paste. A food processor and a fine sieve replace the mortar; keep it stiff enough that the egg sits on it rather than sinking.
Suprême sauce (No. 547)A velouté made with strong white chicken stock, finished with cream; the recipe calls for it 'buttered', i.e. finished with butter. Once the butter is in it will not tolerate a boil — it splits. Keep it below a simmer and it will coat the egg in a thin, glossy layer.
Poaching the eggsBarely trembling water, a splash of vinegar, no salt; the freshest eggs you can find, since older whites spread. Three minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. Paring the ragged edges of each egg before plating is worth doing here.
Draining"Well-drained" is not incidental — water carried over from the pot will thin the sauce and turn a bread croustade to mush. Lift each egg onto a folded cloth or paper for a few seconds before it goes on the purée.
The variationsMushroom (No. 722), game (No. 716) and truffle (No. 731) purées are direct substitutions for the chicken. Mushroom is the most practical: duxelles-style, cooked dry, then sieved and bound with a little cream so it does not weep.
YieldEight eggs, so eight croustades — four servings as a lunch or supper course, eight as one course in a longer meal.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, running to well over three thousand numbered recipes. The numbering is the point: the book is built like a French professional repertory, where a finished dish is a short paragraph assembling components documented elsewhere, and a cook is expected to have purées, velouté and garnishes already standing. Poached eggs treated this way — set in a case, over a purée, under a rich sauce, and named for whatever is beneath them — belong to a long line of egg entrées that let a restaurant produce dozens of apparently distinct dishes from a handful of mother preparations. Suprême sauce itself is simply velouté made with chicken stock and enriched, and the word suprême in nineteenth-century French kitchens signalled both the white meat of the bird and the pale, refined sauce that generally accompanied it.