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Eggs Cocotte, Firenzi
Pick off all the meat from the turkey left-over from Monday. Place in a mortar and pound to a pulp; then press through a sieve into a bowl and add two gills cream. Season with two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon ground nutmeg; mix well with a whisk. Divide the preparation equally into six cocotte dishes, then carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Mix half teaspoon salt with two saltspoons white pepper and equally season the eggs with it. Place the cocottes on a tin and set in the oven to bake for eight minutes. Remove and serve.
A leftover dish dressed up in French service: turkey pounded to a purée, spread in individual dishes, eggs broken over it and baked briefly. The whole thing hinges on pulling them while the yolks are still loose.
- Cocotte dishesSmall individual porcelain or earthenware ramekins of about 4 oz capacity, one per person. Not the heavy lidded Dutch oven the word suggests today.
- Gills and saltspoonsTwo gills is one cup of cream. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the turkey purée takes half a teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, which was normal for the period. The recipe does not even specify a moderate oven; around 350F is a reasonable modern reading for an eight-minute bake, but the figure is an inference, not the book's.
- Water bathFilippini sets the cocottes on a tin sheet, but a roasting pan with an inch of hot water gives gentler, more even heat and keeps the whites from turning rubbery at the edge before the centre sets.
- The eight minutesTwelve eggs will not all set in eight minutes in a domestic oven; expect 10 to 14, and judge by the whites, which should be just opaque with the yolks still fluid. Carryover heat continues in the hot dishes after they come out, so err early.
- Runny yolksThe dish is meant to be served soft. Anyone cooking for the very young, the elderly, or the immune-compromised should use pasteurised shell eggs or bake until the yolks are firm.
- Turkey quantityThe original assumes whatever was left on the carcass. Roughly 2 cups of picked meat, about 10 oz, purées with a cup of cream into enough to line six dishes with a good half inch. A food processor does in seconds what the mortar and sieve were for, though passing it through a sieve afterwards still improves the texture.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of white pepper across twelve eggs is light. Season each yolk-and-white directly rather than trying to sprinkle evenly over the whole tray.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book reflects the habits of a professional kitchen translated for the household; the instruction to use "the turkey left-over from Monday" evidently points back to an earlier recipe rather than being a mystery. Eggs en cocotte — baked in individual dishes over a bed of something savoury — belong to the French repertoire Delmonico's drew on, and the format suited a kitchen that wanted to turn scraps into a course that could be sent out looking composed. "Firenzi" appears to stand for Florence; Florentine style usually means a bed of spinach, so the label here does not match the usual sense, and may simply be a garnish name applied loosely.