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Eggs, Schiff
Heat two tablespoons good melted butter in a small saucepan, add six finely sliced, good-sized, peeled and thoroughly cleaned fresh mushrooms and gently brown five minutes, then add a tablespoon flour; mix well while heating one minute, pour in two tablespoons sherry, one and a half gills cream and a gill milk. Season with teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, then add one finely chopped truffle, four anchovies in oil cut in small pieces, and mix well. Cut eight hard-boiled eggs in quarters, add them to the sauce, gently mix, drop the eggs into a baking dish, sprinkle a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over. Set in oven to bake ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A rich hard-boiled egg gratin in a mushroom-sherry cream. The whole dish comes together in about twenty minutes, and its only real risk is a broken or leaden sauce.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so this wants 3/4 cup cream and 1/2 cup milk. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon — a quarter teaspoon of cayenne is assertive but not unreasonable against that much dairy and egg.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because everything is already cooked; the bake is only to heat through and colour the cheese. Use 400F for the ten minutes, or run it under the broiler for two or three.
- The hinge: don't overcook the eggsHard-boiled eggs that then sit in a simmering sauce and go into an oven turn rubbery and sulphurous. Boil them 9-10 minutes, cool them in cold water, and fold them in off the heat at the last moment.
- Building the sauceThis is a straightforward roux thickened with a tablespoon of flour against 1 1/4 cups of liquid — quite loose. Add the sherry first and let it reduce a few seconds before the dairy, or the acid and alcohol will taste raw.
- Anchovies and saltA full teaspoon of salt plus four anchovies plus Parmesan is a lot of salt by current palates. Season at the end, after the anchovies have dissolved into the sauce.
- The truffleA fresh black truffle is a considerable outlay for a supper dish. A teaspoon of truffle paste, or simply a few drops of truffle oil stirred in off the heat, gets you nearer the intent than most bottled preserved truffles will.
- MushroomsThe recipe says only 'fresh mushrooms'; the instruction to peel them suggests common cultivated white mushrooms. Slice them thin and let them brown properly — five minutes over decent heat, not steamed in their own liquid, or the sauce turns grey and watery.
- YieldEight eggs in a shallow gratin dish serves four generously as a lunch or supper dish, six as a first course. It does not reheat well.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), and it belongs to a large family of dishes in that book named after individuals rather than places or ingredients — Eggs Schiff sits among dozens of similar constructions. Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, where the custom of attaching a regular patron's surname to a dish was well established, and the compliment was often carried into print without explanation, so the person behind the name is now hard to identify. The dish itself is characteristic of its restaurant moment: hard-boiled eggs, which cost almost nothing, elevated by sherry, cream, anchovy, Parmesan and a truffle.