Home › The World's Kitchen › Poached Eggs, Louise
Poached Eggs, Louise
Cut from a sandwich loaf twelve quarter-inch-thick slices, then cut in round pieces two inches in diameter, toast to a nice golden colour, spread over them a little anchovy paste and dress on a hot dish. Prepare twelve poached eggs, lay them on toasts, pour over a Hollandaise sauce and serve.
A twelve-portion egg dish built from three parts, only one of which is fussy: the sauce. Read it as a brunch plate and the assembly order becomes obvious.
- Poach last, hold warmMake the hollandaise first and keep it over warm (not hot) water, toast the rounds next, and poach the eggs only when both are ready. Hollandaise held over direct heat or allowed to get too hot will break, and reheated poached eggs turn tough.
- Sandwich loafA close-crumbed white pan loaf, sliced thin. Quarter-inch slices cut with a two-inch round cutter give firm little bases; the trimmings are worth drying for crumbs.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold in tubes, and salty enough that the toast needs nothing else. A very thin scrape is right — roughly a quarter-teaspoon per round — or the salt will fight the lemon in the sauce.
- Poaching waterBarely simmering water with a splash of vinegar and no salt; three minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. Lift each egg onto a cloth to drain, or the water will soak the toast.
- Hollandaise quantityFor twelve eggs figure a generous cup or more of sauce: three yolks, a tablespoon of water, a cup of butter, lemon and salt to taste.
- YieldThe recipe does not say; twelve rounds will serve six at two eggs each, or twelve at one. It does not hold, so plate and carry it straight to the table.
- Serving dish"A hot dish" means genuinely warmed — a platter out of a low oven. Cold china pulls the heat out of poached eggs within a minute.
Poached or soft eggs on a toast base under a rich sauce is the pattern behind a whole family of restaurant egg dishes that spread from French kitchens into American hotel and club cookery in the late nineteenth century; eggs Benedict is the best-known survivor of the type. The personal names attached to them Ŏ Louise, Bennett Ŏ are often said to be a garnish convention as much as a record of anyone in particular, though eggs Benedict itself is conventionally traced to a diner named Benedict, and cookbooks of this period rarely explain them. What distinguishes this version is the anchovy paste, a Victorian and Edwardian British habit that put concentrated fish savour under eggs, on toast at breakfast, and into countless "savoury" courses; it does the same work here that salt and umami do in a modern seasoning.