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Poached Eggs, Lyonnaise
Cut in half and slice very finely two medium-sized, sound white onions, place in a saucepan with half ounce butter, half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Cover the onions with a sheet of buttered paper, cook on the range for two minutes and set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove, lift up the paper and dress the onions on a large, hot dish and keep warm. Prepare twelve poached eggs. Carefully lay them over the onions. Spread one tablespoon melted butter over the surface of the eggs, sprinkle a teaspoon chopped parsley over all and serve.
A simple assembly whose success rests entirely on the onions: they should melt to a pale, sweet compote without taking any colour. Everything else is timing.
- The hinge: no browningThe buttered paper laid directly on the onions is a cartouche, and its job is to trap steam so the onions stew rather than fry. Cut the rounds paper-thin and keep the heat gentle.
- Oven heatThe original names no temperature. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for twenty minutes; check at fifteen and stir once. The onions are done when they collapse under a spoon with no bite left.
- Half an ounce of butterThat is one tablespoon, which is lean for two onions. Two tablespoons gives a better texture and less risk of scorching before the oven takes over.
- White pepperHalf a teaspoon is a lot of pepper for two onions by modern palates, and white pepper from a jar loses its edge quickly. Start with a quarter teaspoon, freshly ground if possible, and correct at the end.
- Poaching twelve eggsPoach in batches of three or four in barely trembling water with a splash of vinegar, three minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Slide each into a bowl of warm water as it comes out, then drain on a cloth before dressing so no poaching water thins the onions.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment cut to the diameter of the pan, buttered on the underside, does exactly what the original sheet did. Foil works but conducts heat harder at the edges.
- Yield and serviceTwelve eggs serves six as a lunch or supper dish, or twelve as part of a larger breakfast. It must go to the table hot and immediately; poached eggs held warm continue to firm up.
In French kitchen shorthand à la lyonnaise means onions, and has done since at least the nineteenth century, when the cooking of Lyon and its surrounding market gardens became a reference point in the professional repertoire. The convention runs through potatoes lyonnaise, tripe lyonnaise, sauce lyonnaise and this egg dish alike: sliced onions softened in butter, doing the work of a sauce. Its inclusion in a general cookbook of the period reflects how thoroughly French terminology had been absorbed by English-language household and hotel cookery, where a cook was expected to read "lyonnaise" on a menu and know precisely what was meant. The buttered paper and the twenty minutes in the oven are the mark of a kitchen with range space and oven space running at once, and twelve eggs suggests a dish sent up whole to a table rather than plated individually.