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Poached Eggs, Riga
Cut out from a sandwich loaf twelve round pieces a quarter-inch thick and two inches in diameter, toast, lightly butter, then spread half teaspoon caviare over each and place on dish with a folded napkin. Prepare twelve poached eggs trim them a little, place one on top of each toast, decorate the dish with a little parsley greens and serve.
A garnish dish more than a cooking one: the work is in the poaching and the assembly, both of which have to happen close to the moment of serving.
- Poach shortThree minutes in barely shivering water, around 180-190F, gives a set white and a liquid yolk. The recipe assumes you know this; older instructions that call for a full boil produce tough, ragged whites.
- Trim means trim"Trim them a little" is the standard restaurant step of cutting away the wispy skirt of white with a knife or round cutter so the egg sits neatly within the two-inch toast. A slotted spoon and a folded towel to drain on make this easier.
- Sandwich loafA close-crumbed white pan loaf, sliced by hand. Cutting your own rounds from an unsliced loaf lets you control the quarter-inch thickness the recipe asks for.
- CaviareRiga was a Baltic port of the Russian Empire, and the name likely points at sturgeon caviar, though the recipe says only "caviare." Any good roe works here; dyed lumpfish roe in particular can bleed colour into the egg white.
- Do not saltThe caviar carries all the salt the dish needs. Season the poaching water lightly if at all, and leave the eggs unsalted at the table.
- TemperatureWarm eggs on warm toast, with the caviar added at the last moment. Roe held over heat for more than a minute or two turns dull and grainy.
- YieldTwelve rounds serves six as a first course, or four as a light lunch dish. The folded napkin under the toasts was standard service practice, presumably to absorb butter and keep them from sliding on the platter.
Riga was then a Baltic port of the Russian Empire, and the name on a menu of this kind points to caviar, in the same family as "a la Russe" or "Moscovite" -- though "Riga" is not a fixed garnish term in the way those are. This is one of many named preparations in the classical repertoire built on a single poached egg, a base and a topping, a system largely worked out in French professional kitchens in the later nineteenth century and reproduced in English-language compendia like this one. Its presence in a book called The International Cook Book suggests what "international" meant to an American publisher of the period: not the food of Latvian households, but grand-hotel cooking wearing foreign place names.