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Eggs, Vanderbilt
Pour two gills double cream in a large, round, silver baking dish, adding two tablespoons sherry, three saltspoons salt, saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Finely chop six medium, well peeled and cleaned fresh mushrooms, place in a frying pan with a teaspoon butter and cook five minutes, tossing them well meanwhile, then add to the cream and mix well. Carefully crack twelve fresh, eggs into the dish. Season eggs evenly with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, then set in oven six minutes. Remove, pour half the quantity of a Perigueux sauce over the eggs and serve.
A dish of eggs baked in seasoned cream, finished with a truffled brown sauce. The measurements are Delmonico's-era professional shorthand, and the oven time is optimistic for the quantity.
- Gills and saltspoonsTwo gills is one cup of cream. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of salt is 3/4 teaspoon, and the cayenne and pepper amounts are 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon respectively. The half saltspoon of nutmeg is an eighth of a teaspoon.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book supplies none. A moderate oven, in the region of 350-375F, is a reasonable modern reading, low enough to set the whites without driving the cream to a hard boil.
- Six minutes is not enoughTwelve eggs in a cup of cold cream will likely need considerably longer, on the order of 12-18 minutes in a moderate oven, before the whites lose their transparency. Pull the dish while the yolks still tremble, allowing for some residual cooking in the hot dish. Judge by the whites, not the clock.
- The silver dishA round silver or silver-plated gratin dish was standard restaurant service ware and conducts heat fast. An enamelled cast-iron or earthenware gratin dish of similar width works; what matters is that the eggs sit in one layer, not stacked.
- Warm the cream firstThe hinge of the dish. Heating the seasoned cream and mushrooms to just below a simmer before the eggs go in means the whites set from beneath rather than sitting in a cold bath while the tops overcook.
- Perigueux sauceA demi-glace finished with chopped black truffle and Madeira; the book treats it as a separate preparation. What 'half the quantity' refers to is not defined in the text, so make enough to nap twelve eggs lightly. A good jarred demi-glace with truffle peelings and a splash of Madeira is the practical substitute.
- MushroomsFive minutes in a teaspoon of butter will not drive off much water from six chopped mushrooms. Cook them until the pan is dry and the pieces begin to colour, or the cream will thin and separate.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a lunch or supper course, four if it is the centre of the meal. Serve straight from the baking dish with toast.
The International Cook Book is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it carries the house habit of naming dishes for the customers who ordered them or were flattered by them. The Vanderbilts were among Delmonico's most conspicuous patrons in the late nineteenth century, and a plate of eggs baked in cream under truffled Perigueux sauce is the kind of small, expensive, technically simple thing such a name tended to be attached to: the luxury sits in the truffle and the cream, not in the labour. Perigueux sauce itself takes its name from the town of Perigueux in the Perigord, the centre of the French black truffle trade. The recipe also shows how eggs could be served in that world -- not fried at a counter but baked in a silver dish and brought to the table in it.