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Eggs a La Coque
Carefully drop twelve fresh eggs into a saucepan with two quarts boiling water and boil for three minutes; remove with a skimmer, place on a dish with a folded napkin and serve with six egg stands.
N. B. When eggs are brought to the table with shells black with dirt, etc, they make an exceedingly unsightly appearance. To avoid this have a coarse towel, pour a little vinegar and salt on a small part of the towel, hold it in the palm of the hand and gently rub the eggs with it.
A three-minute egg is the whole of this recipe, so everything depends on the water staying at a boil and the timing being honest. The rest is presentation.
- The hinge: keep the water boilingTwelve cold eggs dropped into two quarts of water will knock it off the boil for a minute or more, and the three minutes are counted from the moment of immersion. Use a generous volume of water in a wide pan, bring the eggs to room temperature first, or cook in two batches of six.
- What three minutes gives youA set but tender white and a wholly liquid yolk, eaten from the shell with a spoon. Four minutes gives a thicker white with a still-runny centre; five begins to thicken the yolk. Add roughly 30 seconds for eggs straight from the refrigerator, which would not have been standard kitchen equipment when this was written.
- Egg standsStands or cups for serving a boiled egg upright. Twelve eggs and six stands implies two eggs per person, a breakfast portion. The folded napkin on the dish would keep the eggs from rolling and absorb water.
- Cleaning the shellsThe vinegar-and-salt rub reflects unwashed farm eggs. Commercially sold eggs in the US are already washed and sanitized; in the UK and much of Europe they are deliberately left unwashed to preserve the natural cuticle, and should be wiped dry rather than wetted. Do not wash eggs before storing them either way.
- CrackingA slice across the top with a serrated knife, or a sharp tap with the back of a teaspoon, is the usual method. Some cooks prick the round end with a pin before boiling to reduce cracking, though a gentle lowering on a spoon does as much.
- Runny yolks and who should skip themA three-minute yolk is well below the temperature at which Salmonella is destroyed. Healthy adults eat soft-boiled eggs routinely, but for infants, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immunocompromised, pasteurized eggs or a fully set yolk is the safer choice.
- YieldServes six as written.
À la coque means simply "in the shell," and the phrase has stood in French cookery for the soft-boiled egg since long before this book collected it. The note about dirty shells is the giveaway that eggs then arrived from the producer unwashed and often straight from the coop, and that presentation in the shell left nowhere to hide. Egg cups and egg stands were ordinary breakfast equipment, which is why the recipe can call for six of them without explanation.