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Poached Eggs, Argenteuil
Open a pint can of asparagus tips. Drain off the liquor and plunge the asparagus into a pint of boiling water for two minutes. Drain, then press them through a sieve into the same saucepan, but dry. Add one tablespoon butter, half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar and a saltspoon cayenne pepper. Stir well while heating on the fire for three minutes and keep hot. Prepare twelve poached eggs, but no toasts. Arrange the puree on a hot dish, lay the poached eggs on top and serve.
A simple asparagus puree under poached eggs, written for a cook who already knows how to poach. The only real technique here is getting the puree thick enough to hold the eggs.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. With cayenne that is a decisive amount for a pint of puree; start with half and taste.
- The canned asparagusA pint can is roughly 15 oz net. Fresh asparagus tips work better: about 1 lb trimmed, boiled 4-6 minutes until fully tender, since the sieve will not break down anything still firm.
- Why boil canned tips againThe two-minute plunge was most likely to freshen the tips and rid them of the tinny brine flavour of early canned goods. Modern canned asparagus needs only a good rinse, though a brief blanch does no harm.
- "Into the same saucepan, but dry"The pan is emptied and wiped before the puree goes back in, so no cooking water thins it. This matters: a loose puree will not support the eggs and the dish becomes soup.
- Sieve versus blenderA food mill or a fine drum sieve gives the texture intended. A blender aerates and can turn the puree pale and frothy; if you use one, press it through a sieve afterwards to catch fibres.
- Poaching twelve eggsPoach them ahead into cold water, then reheat 30-45 seconds in hot salted water just before serving. Trying to poach a dozen to order will leave the first ones cold and the puree skinned over.
- No toastFilippini's "but no toasts" reads as a deliberate departure from the usual poached-egg service on toast, though he does not say why. The puree is the bed, and the plate should be genuinely hot or it will chill in a minute.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; twelve eggs would serve about six as a lunch or supper course at two eggs each.
Argenteuil, a town on the Seine northwest of Paris, was the great asparagus district of nineteenth-century France, and in classical French kitchen language any dish carrying its name involves asparagus, usually as a puree or a garnish of tips. Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with these garnish names as shorthand a professional would recognise instantly. His willingness to open a can is worth noting: American canned asparagus was widely available by the 1900s, and a chef of his standing treating it as an acceptable base ingredient says something about how quickly canning was absorbed into even ambitious cooking. The two-minute boil and the pressing through a sieve are the concessions he makes to it.