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Eggs, Suedoise
Boil twelve fresh eggs for eight minutes, lift from the hot water and plunge in cold water for one minute, remove and shell them. Cut each egg in two lengthwise, scoop out yolks and place them in a bowl. Cut six salted anchovies in short pieces and add to yolks with two tablespoons bread crumbs, half gill cream, half ounce butter, three saltspoons salt, saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Stir all together with a wooden spoon till well amalgamated, fill up cavities of whites with this mixture, dip eggs in beaten egg, then roll in freshly prepared bread crumbs, place in a frying basket and plunge in boiling fat for four minutes. Remove, drain, then sprinkle over a teaspoon salt, dress on a dish with folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve with tartare sauce separately.
A deep-fried stuffed egg from the Scandinavian pages of the book. The technique is sound; the seasoning and the frying time both need a modern eye.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of salt is 3/4 teaspoon and the cayenne and nutmeg are a pinch each. Half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup.
- Cut the saltSalted anchovies, 3/4 teaspoon of salt in the filling and a further teaspoon showered over the finished eggs adds up to a great deal. Rinse and soak the anchovies, salt the yolk mixture to taste, and skip the final sprinkle.
- Salted anchoviesThese are whole fish packed in salt, still sold at Italian and Scandinavian grocers; they must be rinsed, soaked briefly and filleted off the bone. Oil-packed fillets substitute directly, six fillets for six fish halves the intensity but is closer to what most kitchens have.
- Eight minutes is rightEight minutes then straight into cold water gives a just-set yolk with no grey ring, and the yolks scoop out cleanly. Do not go to twelve out of habit.
- Fry hotter, brieferFour minutes will darken the crumb and toughen the whites. Bring the fat to 350-375F and give the eggs 60 to 90 seconds, just until the coating is deep gold; everything inside is already cooked.
- Chill before fryingThe filled halves fry far better if the coated eggs rest 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Cold filling stays put and the crumb sets rather than sloughing off in the fat.
- Crumbs"Freshly prepared bread crumbs" appears to mean crumbs made up fresh from bread rather than the sandy commercial kind. Panko gives a similar open, crisp shell.
- YieldTwelve eggs make twenty-four halves, enough for eight as a first course or a supper dish. The napkin and parsley are period presentation and can go.
"Suedoise" is simply the French kitchen's adjective for Swedish, and it marks the dish as what is generally taken to be a restaurant borrowing rather than anything a Swedish cook would have called by that name. What makes it read as Nordic is the anchovy: salt-cured sprat and anchovy were staples of the Swedish table, and the pairing of cured fish with egg runs through everything from the smorgasbord to Jansson's temptation. Collections of such nationally labelled dishes were gathered for American cooks and filtered through the classical French vocabulary, which is why a Swedish egg arrives here crumbed, deep-fried and served with tartare sauce on a folded napkin.