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Eggs, Washington
Boil twelve fresh eggs for eight minutes. Remove, plunge in cold water for a minute, lift up and shell them; cut a piece off the thicker end of each so they will stand up; cut a quarter of the white from the top so as to enable you to easily scoop out the yolks. When all scooped out place the yolks in a bowl with one ounce finely grated Virginia ham, one saltspoon chopped parsley, one saltspoon chopped chives, one saltspoon chopped chervil, a tablespoon good butter and two tablespoons thick cream. Season with half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix the whole together to a puree, place in a paper cornet and carefully press into the scooped-out eggs. Cut twelve round pieces of bread quarter-inch thick and one and a half inches in diameter and toast to a nice golden colour; lay an egg on each toast and place on a tin. Cover the eggs with the cut-off tops. Prepare a Mornay sauce and spread it evenly over the eggs. Set in the oven to bake for ten minutes, or until a nice golden colour. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A stuffed hard-boiled egg dish that finishes as a small gratin. The work is in the piping and the sauce; the eggs themselves are straightforward.
- The hinge: don't overcook the eggsEight minutes at a full boil gives a set but still tender yolk that mashes into a smooth paste. Push to twelve and the yolks turn chalky and the puree goes grainy no matter how much cream you beat in.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. A cayenne saltspoon is a lot of heat for twelve eggs; start with an eighth and taste.
- Paper cornetA cone rolled from parchment or baking paper, used as a disposable piping bag. A small piping bag with a plain or star tip does the same job, or fill with two teaspoons if the filling is stiff enough.
- Virginia hamA dry-salt-cured Southern ham, closer to prosciutto or a country ham than to supermarket deli ham. One ounce grates up to a few tablespoons; prosciutto or Serrano is the nearest easy substitute, and pink watery boiled ham is not.
- Chervil and chivesChervil goes limp and loses its anise note within days of picking, which may be part of why it shows up more in older books than newer ones. If you cannot find it, use extra parsley plus a pinch of tarragon rather than leaving the herb blank.
- Mornay sauceA béchamel enriched with grated Gruyère, and often Parmesan, with the cheese stirred in off the heat. Make it thick enough to sit on a curved egg without sliding onto the toast — a coating consistency, not a pouring one.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for the ten minutes stated, or run them under a broiler for two to three minutes; the eggs are already cooked, so all you want is to set and colour the sauce.
- The toast roundsCut them with a 1 1/2-inch cutter and toast them dry rather than buttering; buttered toast under a wet sauce collapses. They exist to keep each egg upright and to absorb the sauce that escapes.
- YieldTwelve stuffed eggs — a first course for six, or a supper dish for four with a salad. Assemble and stuff ahead, sauce and bake at the last minute.
The name follows a nineteenth-century restaurant convention of attaching a place or person to a garnished preparation, and the Virginia ham in the filling is what earns the American label here — much as à la Mornay marks the cheese sauce and fines herbes the parsley, chives and chervil. Filippini's International Cook Book collects hundreds of such dishes from the Delmonico's tradition in New York, where he had long worked, and its egg chapter is a catalogue of exactly this kind of small hot entrée: a boiled egg hollowed, enriched, set on a crouton, sauced and glazed. Dishes like this belonged to a kitchen with cheap labour and a hot oven always going, which is why elaborate individual garnishes for twelve appear without comment. The combination of hard yolk mashed with butter, cream and cured pork will be familiar from the deviled egg, which survived into home cooking precisely because it stops before the sauce and the oven.