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Eggs, Wingfield
Finely slice a medium white onion, place in small saucepan with one and a half gills milk, three saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne and one saltspoon grated nutmeg, lightly mix, then boil twenty-five minutes. Strain through a Chinese strainer into a small saucepan, add one ounce good butter and a half gill cream; mix well. Divide this preparation into six egg-cocotte dishes, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish, evenly season with a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, lay on a tin, set in oven five minutes, remove and serve.
This is oeufs en cocotte on a spiced onion cream, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen that assumed you already knew the oven. Two things need attention: the milk must not be allowed to boil hard for twenty-five minutes, and five minutes will not set twelve eggs.
- The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup and a half gill of cream is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon: three saltspoons salt is about 3/4 teaspoon, and one saltspoon each of cayenne and nutmeg is 1/4 teaspoon apiece.
- Cayenne quantityA quarter teaspoon of cayenne in 3/4 cup of milk is assertive but not a misprint — the dish is meant to have heat behind the nutmeg. Halve it if you are serving it to a mixed table.
- "Boil twenty-five minutes"At a true boil that volume of milk will scorch and climb the pan. Hold it at a bare simmer so the onion softens and the milk reduces and takes on flavour; expect to end up with roughly half a cup before you strain.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve works; press the onion firmly to extract the flavoured milk, then discard the solids.
- Egg-cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided ramekins, large enough to take two eggs and the cream. Butter them, and divide the onion cream evenly between them as the recipe directs — roughly two tablespoons apiece — before the eggs, so the yolks sit above the liquid.
- Oven and timeThe book gives no temperature. Bake at 350F, and five minutes is far short — reckon on 10 to 14 minutes for whites just set with liquid yolks. Setting the ramekins in a shallow pan of hot water gives far more even results and is standard practice for cocottes.
- Seasoning at the endThe half teaspoon of salt and two saltspoons (1/2 teaspoon) of white pepper are distributed across all six dishes, not per dish. The onion cream is already salted, so season the eggs lightly.
- YieldSix dishes of two eggs each — six servings as a first course, or three or four as a light supper with bread.
The recipe comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini had spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and the book carries the habits of that kitchen — brisk professional phrasing, French technique, and dozens of dishes labelled with a surname. Names like "Wingfield" were generally attached in restaurant and club cooking either to honour a regular patron or simply to file one of many near-identical egg preparations under a distinguishing label, though what lay behind any particular name is usually impossible to recover. What the dish itself shows is how thoroughly oeufs en cocotte had entered American hotel service: individual porcelain dishes, a flavoured cream beneath, and a very short stay in the oven, all of which allowed a kitchen to send out eggs to order without frying or poaching. The onion cooked down in seasoned milk and pressed through a chinois is a small soubise.