No. 2936

Scrambled Eggs a la Jerome

Œufs Brouilles a la Jerome.

Cook some eggs the same as for scrambled with gravy (No. 2940), mixing in when nearly done a salpicon either of partridge, woodcock or any other seasonable game cut in three-sixteenths of an inch squares; dress, pour around the sauce and garnish with the stuffed eggs.

For the Sauce.—Prepare a game fumet (No. 397) with the fragments of game, reducing it with espagnole sauce (No. 414).

Stuffed Eggs.—Have hard-boiled eggs prepared as follows: Boil some eggs for ten minutes, throw in cold water, shell and remove the white from the pointed ends only with a tin tube half an inch in diameter; empty out the interiors with a vegetable spoon (Fig. 91) and pound this with well seasoned bearnaise sauce (No. 433), mixing in chopped-up mushrooms; fill and re-form the eggs with this stuffing, roll in flour, then in beaten eggs and bread-crumbs and fry to a fine color.

← No. 2935 Scrambled Eggs a la Duxelle and with Anchovy Eggs & Omelets No. 2937 Scrambled Eggs a la Martinez →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so this one dish assumes four other numbered recipes. Read it as a plated composition: soft scrambled eggs bound with a little reduced game sauce, studded with diced game, ringed with more of that sauce and flanked by breaded fried stuffed eggs.

The hinge: the eggs stay softThe hinge: the eggs stay soft. Ranhofer sends you to his scrambled eggs with gravy (No. 2940), not reproduced here; cook them gently and stir so they stay loose and creamy, just short of set. The diced game goes in while they are still slack -- the recipe says "when nearly done" -- so it warms through without overcooking the eggs.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply cooked meat cut into small even dice. Three-sixteenths of an inch is roughly 5 mm. Use meat from already-roasted game birds, trimmed clean of skin and sinew, and keep the bones and scraps for the sauce.
Game substitutionsWild partridge and woodcock are seasonal and, in the United States, woodcock cannot be bought. Farmed guinea fowl, quail, pheasant or duck leg meat all work. Roast the bird, dice the breast and thigh for the salpicon.
Fumet and espagnoleThe fumet is a strong game stock made from the carcass and trimmings; espagnole is the old brown mother sauce, a brown roux-thickened veal stock with mirepoix and tomato. A practical substitute is a good reduced brown poultry or veal stock, simmered with the roasted game bones and reduced until it coats a spoon, with a knob of butter stirred in. Season at the end; reduction concentrates salt quickly.
Béarnaise as a stuffing binderThe yolks are pounded with well-seasoned béarnaise and chopped cooked mushrooms. Keep the mixture stiff, mash rather than whip, and chill the filled eggs thoroughly before breading. Béarnaise is an egg-and-butter emulsion and will slump at room temperature, which makes the eggs impossible to coat.
Hollowing the eggsTen minutes boiling gives a firm yolk; the cold water stops carryover cooking and makes shelling easier. For the half-inch tin tube, a plain round pastry tip or an apple corer of similar bore will serve: cut a cap off the pointed end of each egg and scoop the interior out through the hole with a small spoon, leaving the white intact as a case.
Frying the stuffed eggsFlour, egg, crumbs, then fry until the crust is a deep gold; the recipe asks only for "a fine color." The contents are already cooked, so this is colouring rather than cooking through. Drain on paper, and chill the eggs before frying or the filling escapes.
Yield and serviceThe recipe specifies no quantities; figure two eggs per person for the scramble plus one stuffed egg each. Everything except the scrambling can be done ahead, but the eggs must be scrambled to order and sent out at once.

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 how that kitchen thought: no dish stands alone, each is assembled from a library of numbered stocks, sauces and garnishes that the brigade already had on hand. Scrambled eggs enriched with a game fumet and brown sauce belong to the game season, when the restaurant would have had partridge and woodcock carcasses to spare after serving the breasts roasted, and the trimmings became the fumet and the salpicon. Dishes carrying a personal name -- a la Jerome, and Ranhofer's book has dozens like it -- may point to a patron or a colleague, though the identity behind most of them is no longer recoverable; the book itself says nothing. What the recipe records more reliably is the period's appetite for turning a plain breakfast egg into a composed restaurant course, with a second egg preparation deep-fried as its garnish.