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Poached Eggs, Parmentier
Prepare a potato gastronome spread on a hot dish and smooth well. Poach twelve fresh eggs, neatly trim and lay them one beside another on the potato puree, sprinkle a very small finely chopped truffle over them and serve.
A composed egg dish that stands or falls on two things: the potato base must be hot and stiff enough to hold twelve eggs without weeping, and the eggs must be soft-yolked. Everything else is assembly.
- "Potato gastronome"Apparently a cross-reference to another entry in the book rather than anything you can buy. The recipe itself calls the base a potato puree, so read it as a rich buttered potato puree, stiff enough to hold the eggs; if the referenced recipe is not to hand, a stiff pomme puree with butter and a little hot milk is the likely intent.
- Parmentier means potatoIn classical French menu language any dish labelled Parmentier contains potato as the defining element. The name tells you the base is the point of the dish, not a garnish.
- Poaching the eggsBarely simmering water, about 180 190F, with a splash of vinegar and no salt; three minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. Poach in batches of three or four so the water temperature does not crash.
- "Neatly trim"Lift each egg onto a cloth or paper, then cut away the ragged skirt of white with a small knife or a round cutter. This is what makes twelve eggs on a platter look deliberate rather than accidental.
- Holding twelve poached eggsPoach them ahead into a bowl of cold water, then trim and reheat for 30 seconds in hot salted water just before plating. Trying to poach and serve twelve at once guarantees the first ones are cold.
- TruffleThe original calls for a very small truffle, finely chopped; in this period that could as easily have been preserved as fresh. Truffle oil is a different flavour and will read as synthetic against plain potato and egg; if no truffle is available, minced sauteed mushroom and a grating of lemon zest is honest, if not the same dish.
- Hot dishWarm the serving platter thoroughly in a low oven; the book gives no temperature. Potato puree chills fast in a thin layer and a cold platter will turn the base pasty before it reaches the table.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a light lunch or first course, or twelve as part of a larger breakfast service.
The Parmentier label honours Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the eighteenth-century French pharmacist and agronomist who campaigned to get the potato accepted as human food in France rather than livestock fodder, and whose name became classical kitchen shorthand for potato-based preparations. This recipe belongs to the grand-hotel repertoire that Escoffier had codified a few years before The International Cook Book appeared: a neutral starch base, a protein trimmed to uniform shape, and a small quantity of an expensive garnish laid on top to name the plate. The scale suggests its origin - a dozen eggs poached and trimmed to match is restaurant work, or the work of a household with kitchen staff, and truffle was a more routine item in that kind of kitchen than it reads as now.