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Eggs, Carnegie
Detach meat from the turkey left over from Saturday night and cut in very small square pieces--the white part only--and place in a small saucepan with two sweet peppers cut in small squares, six finely sliced canned mushrooms, one and a half gills cream, a tablespoon sherry, half a teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; lightly mix, boil ten minutes, then evenly divide it into six egg-cocotte dishes, place them on a tin, and carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, evenly divided, pour a teaspoon tomato sauce over the eggs of each dish, set in oven for five minutes, remove and serve.
A Sunday-morning use for Saturday's roast turkey, built in individual cocottes. The measurements are all in old small units, and the baking time is the one figure that will not survive contact with a modern oven.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon; the cayenne and nutmeg are therefore 1/4 teaspoon each, and the two saltspoons of white pepper across six dishes is 1/2 teaspoon total.
- Oven heatFilippini gives no temperature. Bake at 375F; eggs set in cocottes tolerate 350-400F but go rubbery above that.
- The five minutes is wrongTwo eggs in a cocotte will barely be warm after five minutes. Expect 10-14 minutes at 375F for set whites and soft yolks, longer if the turkey mixture has cooled. Standing the cocottes in a roasting tin of hot water gives gentler, more even setting than the bare tin specified.
- Boiling the cream ten minutesThat is a reduction instruction, not a cooking one; the turkey is already cooked. Simmer rather than boil hard until the cream coats a spoon and there is just enough to bind, or it will break.
- Sweet peppersThese would have been green bell peppers. They go in raw and may still be firm after ten minutes in cream; soften them in a little butter first if you want them tender.
- Canned mushroomsCanned button mushrooms give a firm, mild result. Fresh sautéed cremini work, but drain them well; their liquid will thin the cream.
- Tomato sauceA teaspoon of a plain reduced tomato sauce, not ketchup and not a herbed pasta sauce. It is there for colour and acid against the cream.
- YieldSix cocottes with two eggs each, so six servings. The recipe gives no quantity for the turkey; roughly 2 cups of diced white meat will fill them.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the habit of naming dishes for the restaurant's patrons and public figures followed him into his cookbooks: pages of eggs, chickens and sauces carry the surnames of financiers, singers and politicians. Andrew Carnegie is the obvious namesake here, though Filippini records no explanation for the attributions. What is more revealing is the opening line, "left over from Saturday night" -- apparently a Sunday dish built on the carcass of the previous evening's roast, dressed up with cream, sherry and cayenne until it could carry a rich man's name. Eggs cooked in individual cocottes, or oeufs en cocotte, were a French restaurant convention, and Filippini's book is full of them.