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Poached Eggs, Giblet Sauce
Prepare twelve poached eggs on toast pour a giblet sauce over them and serve.
This is a two-line assembly note rather than a full recipe: it assumes the cook already has a giblet sauce on the stove and knows how to poach. The gaps are worth filling before you start.
- The sauce is the whole dishNo giblet sauce is given here, so make one first: simmer the neck, heart and gizzard of a chicken or turkey (liver added only for the last 10 minutes) in about 3 cups water with an onion, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns for 45-60 minutes, strain, then thicken with a roux of 2 tablespoons each butter and flour. Chop the giblets fine and return them to the sauce.
- Order of workHave the sauce finished and held just below a simmer, and the toast made, before the first egg goes into the water. Poached eggs will not wait, and a sauce reheated hard after thickening will thin or break.
- Poaching waterBarely trembling water, about 180-190F, with a splash of vinegar and no salt in the water beyond a pinch. A rolling boil shreds the whites. Three minutes gives a set white and liquid yolk; four gives a yolk that is just jammy.
- Twelve eggsThat is six servings at two eggs each, which suits a lunch or supper dish. Poach in batches of four so the water temperature does not crash, and hold the finished eggs in a bowl of warm (not hot) water while the rest cook.
- Drain before platingLift each egg with a slotted spoon and rest it a moment on a folded towel. Poaching water carried onto the toast will soak it and dilute the sauce underneath.
- ToastA firm white bread cut thick, toasted dry and lightly buttered, holds up far better than modern sandwich bread, which collapses under sauce almost at once.
- SeasoningGiblet stock reduces to something quite savory but flat on its own. Finish the sauce with salt, plenty of black pepper and, if you like, a spoonful of sherry or Madeira; fortified wine turns up in a good many period recipes for brown giblet sauce.
- Raw yolk noteThe yolks in a three-minute poached egg stay liquid and are not pasteurized. If you are cooking for someone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurized shell eggs or poach until the yolk is firm.
Giblet sauce belongs to the thrifty end of the roast-poultry tradition: the neck, heart, gizzard and liver came attached to every bird a household bought or killed, and they were simmered into a brown gravy while the bird itself roasted. What makes this entry characteristic of a large early twentieth-century compendium is its brevity: the recipe reads as an instruction to combine two things the reader is assumed to know already, poached eggs and giblet sauce. Eggs on toast under a brown sauce also suits the period's fondness for the light supper or luncheon dish, and the pairing let a cook spend the giblets from Sunday's roast on Monday's meal.