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Eggs Molet with Sorrel
Prepare a sorrel puree and dress on a hot dish, domelike. Plunge twelve fresh eggs in boiling water for five minutes, take up and plunge them in cold water one minute, remove and shell them, then place them around the sorrel. Pour a gill of hot demi-glace over and serve.
An oeuf mollet is the middle ground between soft- and hard-boiled: white fully set, yolk still fluid at the center. Everything here depends on hitting that window and then peeling without wrecking the egg.
- The hinge: five minutes means five minutesLower the eggs into water at a full boil, start timing immediately, and keep the water at a bare rolling boil. Five minutes suits a large egg straight from the refrigerator; six if the eggs are extra large. Small differences in timing show up quickly in how set the yolk is and how well the egg peels.
- The cold plungeOne minute in cold water is barely enough to stop the cooking. Use ice water and give it two minutes — long enough to firm the white for handling but not so long that the eggs go cold, since they are served warm.
- PeelingCrack the shell all over, then peel under a thin stream of cold running water, starting at the fat end where the air cell sits. Very fresh eggs (which the recipe calls for) are notoriously hard to peel at this stage; eggs a week or two old release much more willingly.
- A gillHalf a cup. Poured over twelve eggs it is a gloss, not a sauce pool, which is the intention.
- Demi-glaceA reduction of brown stock and espagnole, simmered down to a syrupy coating consistency. Good tubs and pastes of it are sold now; a reduced beef stock with a little tomato and a knob of butter whisked in at the end gets close enough. It should coat a spoon, not run off it.
- How much sorrelSorrel collapses to almost nothing. Reckon 2 lb of leaves, stemmed, for a puree substantial enough to mound domelike for twelve eggs. Sweat it in butter with no added water — it releases plenty — then puree and season; a spoonful of cream or a little béchamel tames the acidity.
- Keep it out of bare ironSorrel is high in oxalic acid and turns grey-brown fast. Cook it quickly in stainless or enameled pans, not cast iron or unlined aluminum, and serve it soon after pureeing.
- Yield and serviceTwelve eggs serves six as a first course, four as a light lunch. Warm the dish and the eggs will not cool while you arrange them; assemble at the last moment, since a mollet egg does not wait.
Oeufs mollets belong to the classical French repertoire of egg cookery that Escoffier codified and that English-language compilations like this one borrowed from — hence the untranslated mollet and demi-glace. The pairing with sorrel is older than the technique's codification: sorrel (Rumex acetosa) was a staple green in French kitchen gardens long before spinach displaced it, valued for a sharpness that comes from oxalic acid and needs no lemon. Its affinity with eggs is the standard one of acid against fat, the same logic that puts sorrel with salmon and with veal. Sorrel largely dropped out of English-speaking cooking in the twentieth century, partly because it wilts to a fraction of its bulk and does not travel or keep well — which is also why it is easier to grow than to buy.