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Eggs Cocotte with Sorrel
Thoroughly wash one quart fresh sound sorrel leaves, plunge in a quart boiling water ten minutes. Thoroughly drain, then press sorrel through a wire sieve into a saucepan. Add teaspoon good butter, three saltspoons salt, three saltspoons sugar and saltspoon white pepper. Stir on fire while heating two minutes. Evenly divide the puree into six egg-cocotte dishes. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish. Season evenly with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, pour a tablespoon cream over eggs of each dish, place on a tin, set in oven for five minutes. Remove and serve.
A French dish of baked eggs on a sorrel puree, written for a kitchen where oven heat went unmeasured. Two details need translating: the saltspoon, and the missing temperature.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of salt is therefore about 3/4 teaspoon for the puree, and two saltspoons of pepper in the final seasoning is 1/2 teaspoon spread across twelve eggs.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Eggs en cocotte are conventionally baked at 350-375F, and five minutes at that heat sets the whites only barely. Expect 8-12 minutes for whites fully set with a loose yolk, and judge by sight rather than the clock.
- The water bathThe recipe says only to set the dishes on a tin, and calls for no water. Many versions of eggs en cocotte are baked in a pan of hot water so the eggs cook gently; without it the bottoms can tighten before the tops set.
- A quart of sorrelThat is a quart of loose leaves, which cooks down to very little. Sorrel collapses to a khaki puree almost immediately; ten minutes in boiling water is longer than needed, and two or three minutes is enough to break it down.
- Pressing through a sieveThe wire sieve removes the tough ribs and stems. A food mill does the same work; a blender does not, since it purees the fibre rather than leaving it behind. Trim the thickest stems first either way.
- The sugarNot a sweetening. Sorrel is sharply acidic from oxalic acid, and the sugar and butter are there to round that off. Taste the puree before dividing it and adjust, since leaf sourness varies a great deal.
- Cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided ramekins, buttered. Two eggs each is generous; a single egg per dish is more usual today.
- YieldSix dishes, twelve eggs, so six servings as a first course or a light supper with bread. The yolks are meant to stay soft, so serve at once.
Oeufs en cocotte are eggs baked in individual pots, often in a water bath, a technique associated with the French professional kitchen and one that passed into American hotel cooking. Sorrel, oseille in French, was one of the standard partners: its acidity cuts egg richness in the same way it is used with shad, veal and cream soups. It was a common kitchen-garden green in Europe and in earlier American gardens, but it wilts fast and travels badly, so it largely dropped out of general grocery sale in the twentieth century and now turns up mainly at farmers' markets or in gardens. The pairing of a sour green with a little sugar and butter to soften it is an older habit than the recipe itself, and appears in sorrel sauces and purees in French cookery well before this book.