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Eggs, Rockaway
Finely mince six medium, freshly opened clams. Place in a small saucepan with one gill milk; season with a saltspoon salt and half saltspoon cayenne pepper; lightly mix and let boil for five minutes. Divide this preparation evenly into six egg-cocotte dishes, place on a tin. Carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish; mix together two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg, evenly sprinkle it over the eggs and finally pour over each dish one teaspoon cold, thick cream. Set the tin in the oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A Filippini-style baked egg dish that hinges on two things: the size of a saltspoon and an oven temperature the original never states. Both are easy to get wrong.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon; a gill is half a cup. So the clam base takes 1/4 teaspoon salt and about 1/8 teaspoon cayenne, and the seasoning sprinkled over the eggs is roughly 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg divided among six dishes.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for baked eggs; anything hotter sets the whites into rubber before the yolks warm through.
- Set the tin in waterThe recipe puts the cocottes on a bare tin. A water bath filled halfway up the dishes gives far more even, custardy whites and is standard practice for oeufs en cocotte.
- Egg cocottesSmall straight-sided ramekins of about 4 to 5 ounces. Two eggs per dish is a tight fit in anything smaller; butter them well first, which the original omits.
- The clamsSix clams, minced fine; the original does not say which kind, though hard clams (quahogs or cherrystones) suit the method. Five minutes at a boil in milk is enough to cook them through and flavour the milk; longer and they tighten. Bottled chopped clams, drained, will stand in.
- DonenessTen minutes at 350F leaves the yolks liquid and the whites barely set. If you want the yolks firm, expect 15 to 18 minutes, and note that soft-yolk baked eggs carry the usual raw-egg caution for anyone pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised.
- Cream"Cold, thick cream" means heavy cream, poured over at the last moment so it does not sink. A teaspoon per dish is modest; a tablespoon gives a better sauce.
- YieldSix dishes, twelve eggs. A substantial single course for six at breakfast or lunch, served with toast.
The name points to Rockaway, on the ocean side of Queens, whose clam and oyster beds in Jamaica Bay supplied New York restaurants through the nineteenth century; "Rockaway" on a menu of that period functioned much as "Blue Point" did, a shorthand for a local shellfish of known quality. Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's, worked within this convention, often attaching a place name to a garnish or base. The pattern is French: eggs baked in individual cocottes over a savoury bed, a preparation that lets a kitchen turn out a dozen identical portions at once. The Rockaway beds would eventually be lost to pollution and dredging, and the name on the page came in time to outlast the shellfish it referred to.