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Eggs, Mrs. Wright
Prepare a frying batter, adding juice of a sound lemon, a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, and mix well. Poach twelve fresh eggs, carefully roll in batter, gently drop in boiling fat, fry for four minutes, lift up with a skimmer, drain and dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin. Boil six very thin slices bacon for one minute on each side, dress over the eggs and serve with a gill hot tomato sauce separately.
A dish of poached eggs battered and deep-fried, served with blanched bacon and tomato sauce. The success of it rests entirely on the eggs being firm and dry enough to hold a coating.
- The hinge: chill and dry the eggsPoach the eggs, slide them into cold water, then lift out and blot thoroughly on a towel. A warm, wet poached egg will not take batter and will burst in the fat; a cold, dry one handles like a small dumpling.
- "A frying batter"No quantities are given; a frying batter was taken as a standard preparation — flour, egg, and enough milk or water to make a coating that clings. Anything of thick-cream consistency will do; the lemon juice and parsley are the only seasoning specified, so salt it yourself.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz — the tomato sauce is a small sauceboat's worth passed at the table, not a pool under the eggs.
- Fat temperatureThe original only says boiling fat. Work at 360-375F. Below that the batter drinks oil and the egg overheats before it colours; above it the coating darkens before it has set.
- Four minutes is too longAn already-poached egg needs only to have its jacket browned, which takes 60-90 seconds. Four minutes at frying temperature will set the yolk hard and often split the coating.
- "Boil" the baconThis is blanching, a common treatment for the saltier cured bacon of the period — a minute a side in simmering water drew out salt and rendered the slices limp enough to drape. With modern bacon, skip it and simply cook the slices until barely done.
- The folded napkinA linen napkin folded on the platter absorbed frying fat. A rack or a bed of paper does the same work if you would rather not launder it.
- YieldTwelve eggs and six slices of bacon serve six as a luncheon or supper dish, two eggs and a slice each.
The International Cook Book belongs to the tradition of the great American restaurant kitchens, where dishes were routinely named for the patrons who ordered them or the cooks who devised them — Filippini's Delmonico's-trained generation produced dozens of such entries, and a name like "Eggs, Mrs. Wright" tells you only that someone in that circle was worth flattering in print. The technique underneath the name is older and thoroughly French: a poached egg cooled, coated and dropped into deep fat — a treatment often associated with oeufs à la Villeroy — a trick that turns a soft egg into something that can be picked up, plated and sauced like a croquette. The recipe also calls for blanching the bacon and serving the tomato sauce separately.