No. 462

Egg Sauce, English and Polish

Sauce aux oeufs, a l'Anglaise et a la Polonaise

For English Egg Sauce.-Put a pint of veloute (No. 415) in a saucepan with some pepper, nutmeg, the juice of a lemon, and four hard boiled eggs chopped up over a white cloth, and then added to the sauce with a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Should the sauce be too thick dilute it with some mushroom broth and white broth.

For Polish Egg Sauce-Have six small hard boiled eggs; chop up the whites and yolks separately; put into a sufficiently large frying pan half a pound of clarified butter, let it heat until it becomes hazel-nut butter, then season with salt, a tablespoonful or chopped parsley, a tablespoonful of diluted mustard and the chopped eggs; mix all without boiling and pour into a sauce-boat to be served separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two separate sauces under one number: a bound velouté-based sauce in the English manner, and an uncooked butter sauce in the Polish. Both depend on hard-boiled eggs added at the very end.

The hingeDo not boil once the eggs go in. Ranhofer says so explicitly of the Polish sauce ("mix all without boiling"); for the English version it is a sensible extension of the same principle, since prolonged boiling toughens the chopped egg. Warm through and serve.
Velouté (No. 415)A pale roux moistened with veal or chicken stock and simmered until it coats a spoon. A pint is two cups. Any good modern velouté of the same thickness will serve; a stock-based white sauce is the nearest substitute.
"Chopped up over a white cloth"Ranhofer does not explain the direction; the likeliest reading is that the cloth catches the loose yolk crumbs and moisture instead of their being smeared into the board. A sheet of parchment does the same job.
Hazel-nut butterBeurre noisette: butter cooked until the milk solids brown and it smells of toasted nuts. Ranhofer specifies clarified butter, which browns more slowly and more evenly than whole butter, but with clarified butter there are few solids left to colour, so watch it closely and take it off at the first nutty aroma.
Half a pound of butterThat is 8 oz / 225 g for six eggs, which is generous by current taste and gives a very loose, pourable sauce. Ranhofer says only that it is poured into a sauce-boat and served separately. Halving it gives a sauce closer to a modern egg-and-brown-butter dressing.
Diluted mustardMustard powder slaked with water, vinegar or wine was common in nineteenth-century kitchens, though ready-made mustards were also to be had by this date. A tablespoon of prepared Dijon is the practical equivalent.
Mushroom broth and white brothMushroom broth is the strained cooking liquor from turned or stewed mushrooms, kept as a seasoning liquid; white broth is unbrowned veal or poultry stock. Thin the English sauce with plain light stock if you have no mushroom liquor, or with a little water from soaking dried mushrooms.
YieldThe English sauce makes roughly two and a half cups, the Polish roughly a cup and a half. Ranhofer gives no serving count; the Polish sauce is sent to table separately in a sauce-boat.

A Little History

Egg sauce belongs to the long British tradition of serving boiled fish and boiled fowl with something rich and bland alongside; melted butter with chopped hard-boiled egg was standard with salt cod, haddock and boiled chicken well before Charles Ranhofer set it down at Delmonico's in The Epicurean (1894). His "English" version is the French kitchen's improvement on it, thickening the base with velouté rather than plain butter and sharpening it with lemon and nutmeg. The "Polish" version, sauce polonaise, is the same idea stripped back to browned butter, egg and parsley, and the name survives today in the garnish à la polonaise — buttered crumbs, chopped egg and parsley strewn over cauliflower or asparagus. Grouping national styles under a single numbered heading is characteristic of the book, which was written as a working reference for a large restaurant brigade rather than as a domestic cookbook.