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Eggs. Beckwith
Boil twelve fresh eggs for eight minutes, remove and plunge in cold water for one minute, take up and shell, then cut in two lengthwise. Scoop out yolks, place in a bowl, add a half teaspoon chopped parsley, half ounce butter, three tablespoons cream, three saltspoons salt and two saltspoons white pepper, sharply stir with wooden spoon until perfectly smooth and divide into the twenty-four whites. Pour a Mornay sauce on a baking dish, arrange eggs and sprinkle a little grated Parmesan cheese over sauce, set in oven for five minutes, remove and send to table in same dish.
A stuffed-egg gratin from the era when a cook was expected to have Mornay sauce already at hand. The measurements are workable once the old spoon sizes are translated, though the pepper wants restraint.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of salt is about 3/4 teaspoon; two saltspoons of white pepper is 1/2 teaspoon, which is aggressive for twelve yolks. Start with half that and taste, especially since the Parmesan and Mornay both bring salt.
- Half ounce butterOne tablespoon. Have it soft, not melted, or the yolk paste will be greasy rather than smooth.
- The eight-minute eggEight minutes at a steady simmer gives a yolk just set through, which is what you want for a filling that has to hold its shape. The cold plunge stops the cooking and loosens the shell; give it longer than the specified minute if the eggs resist peeling.
- Very fresh eggs peel badlyThe recipe calls for fresh eggs, but eggs a week or two old shell far more cleanly. Since the whites here must stay intact to be filled, use older eggs and start them in already-simmering water.
- Mornay sauceNot given in this entry, and assumed known: a bechamel enriched with cheese, in the classic French version Gruyere with Parmesan and sometimes an egg yolk, thinned to a coating consistency. Something around two cups will cover a dish holding twenty-four halves. Make it slightly loose, as it will tighten in the oven.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Five minutes only makes sense in a hot oven, or under a broiler, since everything in the dish is already cooked and you are simply glazing the surface. Around 425F is a fair modern equivalent, but watch it rather than timing it.
- AssemblySauce goes under the eggs, not over them, so the filled tops stay exposed to the heat and brown. Choose a shallow dish that takes all twenty-four halves in one layer, since it goes to the table as it is.
- YieldTwenty-four halves serves six to eight as a first course, four as a light supper with bread and a salad.
This is one of the run of egg dishes in Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, where recipes are filed under proper names in the manner of a professional kitchen's repertoire book, each a variation on a theme with a patron or colleague's name attached. Filippini spent decades in the Delmonico's orbit in New York, where dishes and garnishes were commonly named after patrons worth flattering. Mornay sauce, the cheese-enriched bechamel doing the work here, is generally traced to nineteenth-century Paris and often said to honor a member of the Mornay family, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. What the recipe really records is the economy of a brigade kitchen: with sauce already simmering on the stove, a dish of stuffed eggs became a five-minute course.