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Eggs Cocotte, Au Jus
Place in a small saucepan a gill demi-glace a tablespoon sherry, half gill broth and half saltspoon cayenne pepper and let boil for five minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Divide into six egg-cocotte dishes, carefully crack two fresh egg in each, season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, lay them on a tin, set in oven for five minutes, remove and serve.
A Delmonico-style baked egg dish that assumes you already keep demi-glace on hand and know how far to trust an oven. The measurements are pre-metric restaurant shorthand and the baking time is optimistic.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so the sauce is 1/2 cup demi-glace plus 1/4 cup broth and a tablespoon of sherry — about 3/4 cup total, divided among six dishes. A saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon.
- Demi-glaceThe original assumes a house stock reduced with espagnole sauce. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; strong reduced beef stock, thickened lightly, is the nearest home substitute. Thin gravy will not cling under the eggs.
- Egg-cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided porcelain ramekins of about 4 to 5 oz. Two eggs will only fit if the dish is at least that size — otherwise use one egg per ramekin and increase the count.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; ovens of the period were judged by feel rather than by dial. Bake at 350F.
- The five minutes is shortTwelve cold eggs sitting on cool sauce in cold porcelain will not set in five minutes. Expect 10 to 15 minutes at 350F, and judge by the whites: set and opaque, yolks still loose. Warming the sauce-filled ramekins before the eggs go in speeds this considerably.
- Water bathStanding the ramekins in a roasting pan of hot water — rather than on a bare tin — is standard modern practice for eggs en cocotte and keeps the bottoms from turning rubbery before the tops set.
- SeasoningThe half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons (1/2 teaspoon) pepper read most sensibly as totals for all six dishes rather than per dish, though the original is ambiguous. Demi-glace is already salty, so season lightly and taste the sauce first.
- Yield and serviceSix servings of two eggs each, meant as a first course or lunch dish. Serve in the ramekins on plates, immediately, with toast; the eggs continue cooking in the hot porcelain.
Cooking eggs en cocotte — broken into a small individual pot and baked, usually in a water bath — was standard hotel and club practice in the French kitchen of the late nineteenth century, and the little porcelain cocotte gave the dish its name rather than any particular sauce. The tag au jus here means simply that the eggs sit on meat gravy: a spoonful of demi-glace, the long-simmered brown sauce that was the backbone of a professional larder, sharpened with sherry and cayenne. The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the assumptions of that world plainly — a cook who can produce demi-glace without being told how, six matching ramekins to hand, and an oven judged by feel rather than by dial.