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Eggs, Moscovite
Cut away a small piece at both ends of twelve hard-boiled eggs. Cut them in half crosswise, scoop out the yolks and place them in a bowl with a tablespoon caviare and half teaspoon finely chopped chives, then mash well with wooden spoon and fill up the half eggs with it. Arrange on a baking dish, cut side up. Evenly spread over a Mornay sauce. Sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese over, then set in the oven six minutes. Remove and serve in same dish.
A stuffed-egg gratin from the era when "Moscovite" on a menu meant caviar and nothing else. The recipe assumes you already have Mornay sauce on hand, which is the one thing it does not tell you how to make.
- The hinge: six minutes onlyThis is a glaze, not a bake. The eggs are already cooked and the sauce is already hot; the oven is there to brown the Parmesan. Longer than a few minutes and the whites turn squeaky and rubbery.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For six minutes to brown the top, a modern oven needs to be hot, in the region of 425-450F; a broiler set high, watched constantly, does the same job in two or three minutes.
- Mornay sauceA béchamel finished with grated Gruyère and Parmesan off the heat. You want about 1 1/2 to 2 cups for twenty-four halves, thick enough to sit on the eggs rather than run off them. Make it just before assembling so it goes into the oven warm.
- Trimming the endsCutting a slice off each end is what lets the halves stand upright without toppling, since these are cut crosswise rather than lengthwise. Do it before halving, and keep the trimmings for the filling.
- A tablespoon of caviar for twelve eggsThat is a seasoning, not a luxury course. Any firm salted roe works here; salmon or trout roe folded in whole rather than mashed reads better on the plate than the original's paste.
- SaltCaviar, Parmesan and Mornay are all salty. Season the yolk mixture only after tasting, and go light on the sauce.
- YieldTwenty-four halves, enough for eight to twelve as a first course or a hot hors d'oeuvre. It scales down cleanly by halves.
"A la Moscovite" was often a signal in the French professional kitchen that a dish carried caviar, though the label was also attached to other preparations, in much the way that "a la Florentine" meant spinach and "a la Portugaise" meant tomato. This is a hotel-kitchen composition rather than a Russian household one: hard-boiled eggs, a classic Mornay, and just enough sturgeon roe to justify the name on a printed menu. The International Cook Book belongs to the generation of American books written by chefs trained in that grand-restaurant system, where a page like this one existed to give the reader a small, cheap dish that sounded expensive. American caviar had been plentiful and comparatively inexpensive during the late nineteenth-century boom in Atlantic and Great Lakes sturgeon, though those fisheries had fallen off sharply by the time this book appeared.