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Eggs Rubler
Mix in saucepan a tablespoon butter with tablespoon flour, pour in half gill milk and gill cream. Sharply mix on fire until it comes to a boil, add an ounce cooked lean ham cut in small squares, the leaves from two branches chervil, two tablespoons sherry, three saltspoons salt and one saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix well and let boil for five minutes. Pour half the quantity of sauce equally in six egg-cocotte dishes, carefully crack two fresh eggs in each dish, then season evenly with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Pour balance of sauce over eggs, place on a tin, set in oven for six minutes, remove and serve.
A rich baked-egg dish of the Delmonico school, built on a small cream sauce poured under and over the eggs. The only real difficulty is the timing, which as written will not set the eggs.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 1/2 cup, so this is 1/4 cup milk and 1/2 cup cream. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon: three saltspoons of salt in the sauce is 3/4 teaspoon, and the single saltspoon of cayenne is 1/4 teaspoon, which is assertive but correct for the quantity of sauce.
- Egg-cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided porcelain dishes; capacities vary. Twelve eggs across six dishes means two per ramekin, plus sauce, so allow enough capacity that they do not overflow.
- The timing is the problemSix minutes will not cook two eggs in a cream sauce. No temperature is given; at 375F expect 12 to 16 minutes for whites just set and yolks still soft, and longer if the dishes are cold from the refrigerator. Judge by the whites losing their translucency, not by the clock.
- Use a water bathThe recipe only says to set the dishes on a tin, which serves to carry them. Standing the ramekins in a shallow pan of hot water keeps the custard-like sauce from breaking and the whites from turning rubbery at the edges while the centers are still raw.
- Season with restraintThe second seasoning adds another 1/2 teaspoon salt and 3/4 teaspoon pepper on top of an already salted sauce containing cured ham. Salt the eggs lightly and taste the sauce first.
- ChervilTwo branches means the leaves stripped from two sprigs, roughly a tablespoon chopped. Fresh chervil is seasonal and fades fast in heat; if you cannot find it, flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon is the usual stand-in, though the anise note will be stronger.
- The sherryThe sauce boils five minutes after the sherry goes in, which cooks off some of the raw alcohol and concentrates the wine. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than a sweet cream sherry.
- YieldSix servings of two eggs each, substantial enough to stand as a lunch or supper dish with toast; halve the eggs per dish if serving it as a first course.
Eggs en cocotte belong to the French restaurant repertoire that dominated American hotel cooking around 1900, and this book's kitchen is squarely that world: a compound of butter and flour, cream, diced ham, chervil and sherry, portioned into individual porcelain dishes and finished in the oven so it can go to table in the vessel it cooked in. The dish name follows the period habit of attaching a proper name to a garnish or preparation, usually a patron, a chef or a colleague, though what "Rubler" refers to is not clear. What is more revealing than the name is the format: a technique learned once and then varied by what went into the sauce, a convenient way to fill out a long breakfast and luncheon card.