No. 53

Egging and Moistening

Dorer et Mouiller

Egging With Whole Eggs.—Beat the eggs with half as much water and run them through a sieve.

Egg-yolks Alone.—Stir the yolks with the same volume of water and strain.

With Milk.—Mix as much milk as yolks, beat well together and strain.

Moistening.—Moisten lightly with water, baking sheets or else flats of paste on which another is to be laid in order to fasten the two together.

For both egging and moistening use a feather or a very soft hair brush (Fig. 184).

← No. 52 To Prepare Hollow Crusts Elementary Methods No. 54 To Beat Up the White of Eggs →

For the Modern Kitchen

An egg wash formula rather than a dish: three dilutions for three finishes, plus the trick of water-welding two sheets of pastry. The proportions are the whole point.

The proportionsWhole eggs with half their volume of water; yolks with an equal volume of water; yolks with an equal volume of milk. Ranhofer does not say what finish each gives, though bakery practice generally treats the whole-egg dilution as the lighter gloss and yolk-and-milk as the deepest colour. Choose by the finish you want, not by habit.
Strain, alwaysThe sieve is not optional. Chalazae and unbroken albumen streaks leave visible ridges and scorched flecks on a baked crust. Push the beaten mixture through a fine strainer and it will lie flat under the brush.
Dorer means to gildThe French title is literal: egging colours the surface gold. Ranhofer's three mixtures contain no sugar.
The brushA feather or very soft hair brush is specified, without explanation; a soft brush is at any rate less likely to drag the cut edge of raw puff paste. A soft natural-bristle pastry brush is the modern equivalent; silicone works but holds less wash and tends to flood corners.
Moistening is glueWater brushed between two sheets of paste makes them adhere as they bake. Ranhofer says to moisten lightly, and specifies water rather than egg for this purpose.
Keep wash off the cut edgeOn puff and other laminated pastes, wash the top only. Egg running down the cut side glues the layers shut and the pastry will not rise.
Yield and keepingKeeping -- Mixed wash keeps a day covered in the refrigerator; discard anything left at room temperature. Ranhofer gives no yield.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of a long career running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, served in two spells from the early 1860s with a break in the later 1870s, and its opening pages are a French professional's syllabus of foundational operations set down in English for an American brigade. The term dorure, gilding, is old in the French kitchen: medieval English cookery used the parallel verb endore for glazing roasts and pastries with egg yolk and saffron to make them look gold at table. By Ranhofer's day the gilding had become purely practical, a matter of controlling shine and colour, and the three dilutions he lists — whole egg and water, yolk and water, yolk and milk — remain the working range in professional bakeries. The feather brush is the detail that dates the entry most clearly; the recipe calls simply for "a feather", a tool of the nineteenth-century pastry room rather than the modern brush.