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Poached Eggs, Bayonnaise
Cut one ounce cooked, lean ham in small dice pieces and place in small saucepan with two tablespoons sherry and one gill demi-glace; boil for five minutes and keep hot.
Cut three well-wiped tomatoes in four slices each, season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper and lightly roll in flour. Heat two tablespoons melted lard in a frying pan, arrange the tomatoes in a pan, one beside another, and briskly fry for three minutes on each side. Remove with a skimmer and place on a large hot dish.
Prepare twelve poached eggs, trim a little, arrange on the tomatoes, pour sauce over and serve.
A straightforward assembly dish that depends on three things being ready at once: fried tomato slices, poached eggs, and a hot ham sauce. Read it through and stage everything before the eggs go into the water.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is the quantity of demi-glace here, reduced slightly with the sherry over five minutes.
- Demi-glaceA reduction of brown stock and espagnole sauce, a staple of the professional kitchen this book was written from. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; a thin canned beef gravy does not, since the sauce needs enough body to cling to an egg.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of pepper is therefore half a teaspoon, spread across twelve tomato slices.
- Bayonne hamThe name is generally taken to refer to Bayonne and its salt-cured ham, though this recipe itself simply calls for cooked, lean ham. A dry-cured ham such as prosciutto, speck or genuine jambon de Bayonne holds up better in the sauce than a wet-cured sandwich ham, which will go watery.
- LardTwo tablespoons of lard gives the best browning and is worth using if you have it. Clarified butter or a neutral oil substitutes directly; whole butter will burn over the brisk heat this calls for.
- Frying the tomatoesThe recipe gives no thickness; four slices from a whole tomato makes fairly thick rounds, and three minutes a side suits firm, slightly underripe fruit. Dead-ripe summer tomatoes will collapse sooner, so cut them thicker, flour them just before they hit the pan, and shorten the cooking.
- Poaching twelve eggsPoach in batches, slide each into ice water as it comes out, and reheat the lot for thirty seconds in hot water just before serving. "Trim a little" means cutting away the ragged skirt of white with scissors or a knife so each egg sits neatly.
- YieldTwelve slices and twelve eggs: six servings of two, or twelve as part of a larger breakfast or luncheon service.
Dishes labelled bayonnaise in classic French kitchen nomenclature are generally taken to refer to Bayonne in the Basque country, long famous for its salt-cured ham, and the garnish is usually that ham cut small and bound in a brown sauce. This book belongs to the era when a cook was expected to read such a label and know what belonged on the plate without further explanation, which is why the recipe gives quantities down to the saltspoon but never bothers to say why the ham is there. Fried tomato with poached egg was the kind of dish that suited breakfast and luncheon service, cheap to assemble in quantity and easy to hold hot on a service dish, and a kitchen running such a menu would have had demi-glace ready to hand.