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Eggs Cocotte, Colgate
Heat a teaspoon melted butter in a saucepan, add three finely chopped shallots and brown three minutes, then pour in two tablespoons sherry, one gill demi-glace, half teaspoon anchovy essence, juice of quarter of a lemon, half teaspoon chopped chives and half saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix well and boil six minutes. Evenly divide sauce in six cocotte dishes, crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Evenly season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Set in oven five minutes. Remove and serve.
A French egg dish scaled for six, built on a spoonful of savory sauce under each pair of eggs. The only real difficulty is the oven time, which the original leaves dangerously vague.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so the demi-glace here is 4 fl oz. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: half a saltspoon of cayenne is barely a pinch, and two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon.
- Cocotte dishesSmall lidded or open porcelain ramekins. Two eggs plus sauce needs a 6 oz dish at minimum; 4 oz ramekins will overflow. Butter them even though the recipe does not say so.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as is common in recipes of this date. Set it to 375-400F, and put the filled dishes in a roasting pan with hot water halfway up the sides so the whites set gently rather than toughening at the edges.
- Five minutes is not enoughTwo eggs in a ramekin over cool sauce need roughly 10-14 minutes at 375F to reach whites that are just set with yolks still liquid. Judge by the whites, not the clock, and pull them when the centers still tremble; they carry on cooking in the hot dish.
- Warm the sauce back upThe sauce is boiled six minutes then divided, which means it may be tepid by the time the eggs go in. Spoon it in hot, and heat the empty ramekins briefly beforehand, or the bottom layer will never come up to temperature before the tops overcook.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled seasoning of anchovy, salt and spice. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste is the closest current stand-in; Worcestershire sauce also works, though it is sweeter and darker in flavor.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, sold frozen or in concentrate tubs. Do not substitute plain beef broth without reducing it hard first, or the sauce will be thin and will thin further as the eggs release moisture.
- Salt with careDemi-glace, anchovy essence and half a teaspoon of added salt together can easily oversalt twelve eggs. Taste the sauce before it goes into the dishes and hold back the salt if it is already seasoned.
- YieldSix dishes of two eggs each.
Oeufs en cocotte are eggs baked in individual porcelain dishes, usually over a spoonful of cream or sauce; the name comes from the small French casserole, the cocotte, rather than from any cooking method peculiar to eggs. The dish belongs to the restaurant repertoire of Alexander Filippini, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and the second half of the title appears to follow a habit of that world: individual preparations were often named for patrons, and "Colgate" is generally taken to honor a customer or family of the house rather than to describe anything in the sauce. The construction assumes a cook has demi-glace and bottled anchovy essence standing ready, neither of which is a household staple now.