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Eggs Cocotte with Clams
Plunge eighteen little neck clams in a half pint boiling water for three minutes. Drain, and cut in small squares, place in a small saucepan with a half gill cream and a gill milk. Season with two saltspoons salt, a light saltspoon cayenne and a light saltspoon grated nutmeg, add a teaspoon butter, lightly mix, and boil for five minutes. Divide this cream evenly in six individual egg-cocotte dishes and carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, equally divided, lay them on a tin, set in oven five minutes, remove and serve.
A Delmonico's-style baked egg dish that assumes a cook who already knows how cocottes behave. Two things need translating: the volume measures, and the fantastically optimistic five-minute bake.
- The measuresA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup cream and 1/2 cup milk. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon: two saltspoons salt is 1/2 teaspoon, and a "light" saltspoon of cayenne or nutmeg is a scant quarter teaspoon.
- Oven and timingNo temperature is given; books of this kind generally left oven heat to the cook's judgement, and few ranges of the period had a reliable thermometer. Five minutes will not set twelve eggs anywhere. At 350F expect roughly 12-18 minutes for whites just firm and yolks still loose, and start checking early — the carryover heat in a ramekin keeps cooking after it leaves the oven.
- Use a water bathThe instruction to "lay them on a tin" is the weak point. Set the ramekins in a roasting pan with hot water halfway up their sides; direct oven heat on a bare sheet overcooks the bottom layer of cream before the whites have set.
- The clamsEighteen littlenecks is three per serving. Three minutes in boiling water is enough to open them; any longer and they toughen. Save the liquor and use it in place of some of the milk — Filippini throws away the best part of the flavor when he says to drain.
- Boiling the creamFive minutes at a full boil will break a cream-and-milk mixture. Bring it barely to a simmer, just long enough to warm the clams through and pick up the seasoning.
- SaltBetween the seasoned cream and the half teaspoon scattered over the eggs, plus naturally salty clams, this runs high by modern palates. Season the cream, then salt the eggs lightly at the table.
- YieldSix ramekins, two eggs each — a first course for six, or lunch for four with bread. Standard 6 oz ramekins work; anything smaller will overflow with two eggs and the cream.
- Runny yolksThe dish is meant to be served with yolks soft. If serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized eggs in the shell or cook until the yolks are firm.
The International Cook Book came out of the kitchens Alexander Filippini ran for Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a professional's notebook: hundreds of short, dense entries assuming a brigade that already knows the moves. Oeufs en cocotte — eggs baked in individual pots, usually over cream — is a French preparation. Pairing it with littleneck clams is the New York touch. Clams were cheap, abundant and unmistakably local, and Delmonico's reputation rested in good part on serving Atlantic seafood by French method.