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Eggs Cocotte, Edmund
Finely chop one medium onion, place in a saucepan with one and a half gills milk, half ounce butter, three saltspoons salt, a saltspoon cayenne, a saltspoon grated nutmeg, and let boil for twenty minutes. Pour in a gill cream, lightly mix, then divide this milk in six cocotte dishes; crack two fresh eggs into each dish, evenly season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, sprinkle a teaspoon freshly chopped chives over them, dredge a tablespoon Parmesan or Swiss cheese on top, evenly divided, set in oven for five minutes, remove and serve.
A French baked-egg dish given in Delmonico house style, with old liquid measures and no oven temperature. The measurements convert cleanly; the timing does not.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup and a gill of cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon.
- Cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided ramekins of about 6 oz, one per person. Two eggs each is generous; single-egg cocottes in slightly smaller dishes are the usual modern portion.
- Oven heatNone is stated. Baked eggs are normally done at 350-375F, and the dishes are best set in a roasting pan with hot water halfway up the sides so the whites set before the cream catches.
- Five minutes is not enoughFive minutes is short -- Following the recipe, the onion milk goes into the dishes straight from the boil, which speeds things along; even so, five minutes is unlikely to set the whites at ordinary baking heat. Expect nearer 10-15 minutes in a water bath, until the whites are opaque and the yolks still tremble.
- SaltThree saltspoons in the milk plus another half teaspoon over the eggs is close to 1 1/4 teaspoons for twelve eggs, and the Parmesan adds more. Cut the seasoning of the eggs themselves back to a pinch per dish and correct at the table.
- The onion milkTwenty minutes of boiling is there to soften the onion and reduce the milk to an infusion; watch it, since dairy at a hard boil will scorch. Straining the onion out gives a smoother result, though the original clearly means to leave it in.
- Cheese on topA tablespoon divided among six dishes is barely a dusting. It will not brown in the time the eggs need, so run the dishes under the broiler for a moment at the end if you want colour.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each, intended as a first course or a light supper dish with bread.
Oeufs en cocotte takes its name from the vessel rather than the dish: a cocotte is a small lidded pot, and the word is generally said to have attached itself, by around the late nineteenth century, to the little porcelain ramekins in which eggs were baked in cream to order. The form suited restaurant service, since the dishes could be filled in advance and finished in minutes, and it appears throughout the Franco-American cookery of the Delmonico school that this book draws on. The name "Edmund" is the sort of dedication that fills such books, honouring a chef, a headwaiter or a regular patron; these garnish-and-dedication titles were how a kitchen catalogued its variations, and many of the people behind them are now difficult, if not impossible, to identify. The onion infused into scalded milk, seasoned with cayenne and nutmeg, is a small piece of classical practice that turns up in b",