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Eggs, Fowler
Drain a half pint fine asparagus tips, place in a small saucepan and mash with a wooden spoon; add a half ounce good butter, a half gill cream, half gill milk, three saltspoons each salt and sugar, half saltspoon cayenne and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well and let gently boil for ten minutes, then press through a cheesecloth into six egg-cocotte dishes, evenly divided. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish, evenly season them with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, lay them on a tin and set to bake in the oven for five minutes. Remove and serve.
A dish of baked eggs set over a strained asparagus cream, from the era when every egg preparation got a surname. The only real difficulty is the timing, which as written will not set the whites.
- Baking time is the hingeFive minutes on a tin will not cook twelve eggs through, even in a hot oven. At 375F, cocottes with cold purée and cold eggs need roughly 10 to 14 minutes for set whites and still-liquid yolks; start checking at 8 minutes if the asparagus base went in hot.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Treat it as a moderate to moderately hot oven, 375F, and stand the ramekins in a shallow pan of hot water reaching halfway up their sides. The water bath keeps the whites tender rather than rubbery at the edges.
- Gills and saltspoonsA half gill is 1/4 cup, or 2 fl oz. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so three saltspoons each of salt and sugar is 3/4 teaspoon of each, and a half saltspoon of cayenne or nutmeg is 1/8 teaspoon.
- Salt loadBetween the purée and the seasoning laid over the eggs, this comes to well over a teaspoon of salt for six servings, before you account for canned asparagus, which is already salted. Season the purée lightly, taste it, and use only a pinch on the eggs.
- A half pint of asparagus tipsHalf a pint here is a volume of drained tips, about a cup, and the wording points to canned or bottled asparagus. One standard can, or about 3/4 lb of fresh tips boiled until quite soft, will do.
- Egg-cocotte dishesStandard 4 to 6 oz ramekins. Twelve eggs across six dishes is generous; two eggs per ramekin needs a wide, shallow dish so they cook evenly, and butter it well.
- StrainingPressing hot purée through cheesecloth is slow work. A blender followed by a fine-mesh sieve gives the same smooth result, and the point of the sieve is to catch the fibrous strings, so do not skip it.
- YieldSix servings as a first course or a lunch dish, with toast to take up the yolk and the asparagus cream underneath.
Filippini's International Cook Book runs through dozens of egg preparations distinguished only by a name attached to each, a habit of the French restaurant repertoire and of Delmonico's in New York, where he worked for years; a regular customer, a colleague or a public figure could have a garnish permanently attributed to him, and the name told the waiter exactly which dish was meant. Eggs baked in individual cocottes over a flavored cream were a standard of that repertoire, the oeufs en cocotte of the classic canon, and asparagus puree was one of the common linings. The half pint of drained tips also suggests a date: by the early 1900s canned asparagus was widely available in American cities, which made a spring vegetable available to a breakfast or luncheon menu in any month of the year.