No. 2950

Soft Eggs for Epicures

Œufs Mollets des Gourmets

Fry in clarified butter some hollowed crusts the shape of an egg (No. 52), having one for each; line the interiors with a bed of foies-gras puree, and range a hot soft egg over. Pour into a saucepan some tomato puree (No. 730), strained through a fine sieve, and incorporate, beating it in, some lobster butter (No. 580), a dash of tarragon vinegar, and a little shallot cut in one-eighth of an inch squares, and blanched. Dress the crusts (Fig. 570), and pour the sauce over.

← No. 2949 Soft Eggs a la Chipolata Eggs & Omelets No. 2951 Soft Eggs with Puree of Sorrel →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade, leaning on numbered cross-references to other parts of The Epicurean. Reconstructed, this is a soft-boiled egg on foie gras in a fried bread case, under a tomato-lobster sauce.

What an œuf mollet isNot a coddled egg in the shell and not a poached egg: an egg boiled in the shell just long enough to set the white while the yolk stays liquid, then peeled. Roughly 5 to 6 minutes for a large egg at a bare boil, straight into ice water, peeled under running water. The peeling is the whole difficulty; eggs a week or so old shell far more easily than very fresh ones.
The hinge: peel and hold in warm waterPeeled mollets tear and cool fast. Keep them in water at about 140F until the moment of serving, and drain them on a cloth before setting them on the foie gras. A cold egg under a hot sauce ruins the dish.
"Hollowed crusts" (No. 52)Croustades: crustless bread cut into ovals, hollowed with a small knife or cutter to hold an egg, fried in clarified butter until golden. Clarified butter matters here because whole butter's milk solids burn before the bread colours. Store-bought brioche or a firm white pain de mie both work.
Foies-gras pureeIn 1894 this meant a cooked foie gras terrine passed through a sieve, often let down with a little butter. A good mousse de foie gras from a tin, softened and smoothed, gives the same effect. Use about a tablespoon per croustade, spread as a bed, not a filling.
Lobster butter (No. 580)Lobster shells and coral pounded with butter, melted, strained and chilled so the flavoured fat sets clear of the debris. It is colour and perfume, not thickening. If you are not making it, do not substitute a bisque or paste; the sauce depends on being mounted with cold fat off the heat.
Mounting the sauceRanhofer says "incorporate, beating it in" for a reason. Sieved tomato puree is warmed, then the cold lobster butter is whisked in in pieces off the boil. If it boils after the butter goes in it will break and go oily.
Shallot and vinegarAn eighth-inch dice, blanched briefly in boiling water to take off the raw bite, keeps texture without harshness. The tarragon vinegar is a dash only, perhaps a teaspoon for a cup of sauce, to lift the richness of foie gras and butter.
Yield and serviceOne croustade and one egg per person, which is all Ranhofer's "having one for each" tells us; the recipe gives no quantities, so scale it to the table. It is richer than it looks. Assemble at the last minute and sauce at the table if possible, so the fried crust does not soften.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a working reference rather than a domestic cookbook: over 3,000 numbered entries that point at one another, assuming a kitchen with stockpots, compound butters and foie gras already on hand. "Des Gourmets" reads as one of the period's honorific menu tags rather than a fixed preparation, and the construction here is pure Franco-American luxury of the period, stacking three expensive things - foie gras, lobster, and tomato puree - on an egg. The œuf mollet itself sits between the coddled egg and the poached, and it turns up repeatedly in French cooking of the era as a neat, self-contained unit that could be sauced any number of ways; the surrounding entries in this section, chipolata and sorrel, show the same egg dressed rich and dressed plain.