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Poached Eggs, Hollandaise
Prepare twelve poached eggs, dress on a hot dish on the toasts, pour a Hollandaise sauce over, sprinkle with a half teaspoon finely chopped parsley and serve.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have the book's Hollandaise and a batch of toast ready. Everything hinges on timing, since neither poached eggs nor Hollandaise will wait.
- YieldTwelve eggs would serve six at two each, though the recipe specifies neither the number of toasts nor the number of portions. Halve it for a small table; poaching twelve eggs to order is the harder part of the job.
- The sauce is the hingeHollandaise breaks above roughly 160-165F and sets into scrambled yolk not far past that. Build it over barely simmering water, off the heat as soon as it thickens, and hold it lukewarm — not hot — until the eggs are ready.
- PoachingUse the freshest eggs you can get, water at a bare tremble rather than a boil, and a splash of vinegar to help the whites set. Three minutes gives a firm white and a liquid yolk.
- Poach aheadFor twelve eggs, poach them in batches and slide them into a bowl of warm (not hot) water. They hold there for twenty minutes or so and can be lifted out, drained on a cloth, and dressed all at once.
- "The toasts"Most likely small rounds or trimmed squares of white bread, toasted and buttered, sized to sit under a single egg; the recipe itself gives no detail.
- Drain properlyPoached eggs carry water, and water thins Hollandaise into a puddle. Blot each egg on a towel before it touches the toast.
- ParsleyHalf a teaspoon for twelve eggs is a whisper of green, chopped fine and scattered at the last moment. Flat-leaf or curly both work; dried parsley does not.
- Raw-yolk noteHollandaise is not reliably brought to a temperature that pasteurizes the yolks, and the egg yolks in a poached egg stay liquid. Anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised should use pasteurized eggs or choose another dish.
Hollandaise carries a Dutch name in a French sauce repertoire, and the reason is not settled: it is generally traced to a butter-and-egg sauce associated with the Low Countries, later absorbed and codified by French professional kitchens, where it became one of the mother sauces taught to every apprentice. Poached eggs under Hollandaise on toast are the same combination that, with ham or bacon added and an English muffin beneath, is served as Eggs Benedict. The bare, telegraphic style here tells its own story: a cook working from these pages was expected to know the sauce by heart and needed only to be told the assembly and the garnish.