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Eggs, Philips
Boil twelve fresh eggs for eight minutes, lift up, plunge in cold water for a minute, remove, shell, slice lengthwise and keep on a plate. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in saucepan, add one finely sliced white onion, three finely sliced, peeled, fresh mushrooms, and gently brown for five minutes, stirring well meanwhile. Add two tablespoons flour, stir well while heating for a minute, pour in one gill milk, a half gill cream and two tablespoons sherry. Mix well until it comes to a boil, then add an ounce grated Parmesan cheese, half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon each cayenne and grated nutmeg, and stir well for a minute. Pour a third of the sauce into a baking dish, arrange half the eggs over, pour another third of the sauce over the eggs, then balance of eggs, the remaining sauce, and sprinkle a little bread crumbs over all. Set in oven for ten minutes, or until a nice brown colour, remove and serve in same dish.
A gratin of hard-boiled eggs in a sherried Mornay-style sauce. The whole thing hinges on the sauce being loose enough to coat the eggs but thick enough to hold its layers, and on the dish going into a hot oven only long enough to brown.
- Gills and saltspoonsOne gill is 1/2 cup, so the sauce takes 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon — with cayenne, err on the light side and taste before assembling.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the original. Everything in the dish is already cooked and the only job is browning the crumbs, so a hot oven — in the region of 425F — suits the ten minutes stated; a moderate oven will take longer and risks toughening the eggs.
- The eggsEight minutes gives a just-set, still-bright yolk in a large egg. The cold plunge is not optional here: it stops the cooking and makes the shells release cleanly, which matters when you need twelve eggs halved neatly.
- Sauce quantityThree quarters of a cup of liquid thickened with two tablespoons flour is a thick sauce, and it must stretch to three layers over twenty-four egg halves. Thin it with a little more milk if it sets up too stiff to pour.
- SherryUse a dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry; the recipe brings the sauce to a boil after it goes in, which takes the raw edge off it. Cooking sherry sold with added salt will throw the seasoning out.
- Mushrooms and onionThree fresh mushrooms will be a couple of ounces or so, depending on size. Brown them and the onion for the five minutes the recipe allows, and let any water they throw off cook away before the flour goes in.
- CrumbsDry crumbs, not fresh, and only a light scatter; a thick blanket will not colour in ten minutes. A little melted butter over them helps them brown evenly.
- YieldTwelve eggs in a shallow baking dish serve six generously as a luncheon or supper dish, eight as a first course. Serve it straight from the dish as directed — it does not transfer neatly.
Filippini's International Cook Book is full of dishes carrying a surname — a habit associated with the restaurant kitchens of the period, where a dish devised for a regular patron could keep the patron's name in the house repertoire. Filippini spent many years at Delmonico's in New York, and many such names in his books can no longer be traced to any particular person; the recipe outlived the diner. The dish itself is a straightforward application of a cheese sauce to hard-boiled eggs, a formula that appears across the period under many names. Eggs in cream sauce were a staple of the luncheon and supper menu: cheap, meatless, and dressed up enough with Parmesan and mushrooms to earn a name of its own.