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Eggs Cocotte, with Anchovies
Cut twelve anchovies in oil in very small pieces, then place in a small saucepan with one and a half gills demi-glace, one tablespoon sherry and a half teaspoon anchovy essence, mix well and let gently boil ten minutes. Evenly divide sauce in six egg-cocotte dishes. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish, equally season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, lay on a tin and set in oven five minutes, remove and serve.
A brief 1910s hotel recipe that assumes a kitchen with demi-glace already on the stove and a cook who knows when a baked egg is done. Two things need translating: the units and the oven time.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of demi-glace is about 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the pepper roughly half a teaspoon across six dishes.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thick enough to coat a spoon. Good jarred demi-glace works; a reduced beef stock will do, but reduce it hard so the sauce sits under the eggs rather than flooding them.
- Oven heat, unstatedThe original gives no temperature at all. Use 375-400F; standing the cocottes in a roasting pan of hot water reaching halfway up the sides helps the whites set gently instead of turning to rubber at the edges, though the recipe itself says only to lay them on a tin.
- Five minutes is not enoughIn a domestic oven, eggs cocotte generally need 10-14 minutes for whites just set and yolks still liquid. Judge by sight: the whites should be opaque and barely trembling.
- Anchovy essenceA thin bottled anchovy sauce, still sold in Britain; Worcestershire sauce is the nearest common substitute, though it is sweeter and more vinegary. If you cannot find either, add a little more mashed anchovy and a few drops of vinegar.
- Drain the anchoviesTwelve fillets in oil carry a fair amount of it. Blot them or the sauce splits and the finished dish reads greasy. Chop them fine enough to melt into the demi-glace during the ten-minute simmer.
- Salt with restraintAnchovies, anchovy essence and reduced stock are all salty. Taste the sauce before adding the half teaspoon of salt the recipe calls for; you will probably want less.
- Yield and serviceSix dishes of two eggs each, so six generous first courses or six light lunches. Serve immediately in the cocottes, with toast fingers for the yolk.
Cocotte is the French word for a small round ovenproof dish, and eggs cooked in one, set in a water bath and served in the vessel they cooked in, were part of the restaurant egg repertoire by the turn of the twentieth century, appearing in Escoffier's listings alongside a number of variations distinguished largely by what lines the bottom of the dish. That is the logic here: the anchovy-and-demi-glace base is the identity of the dish, the eggs being interchangeable. The pairing of salt fish with a rich brown sauce belongs to a period when anchovy essence sat on professional and domestic shelves as a general savoury seasoning, used much as cooks now reach for fish sauce or soy. The book collects such hotel formulas at a length that presumes the reader already keeps demi-glace, which tells you who it was written for.