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Poached Eggs, St. Germain
Boil a pint shelled, tender green peas in a quart boiling water with teaspoon salt fifty minutes. Thoroughly drain on sieve, then pound in mortar to a pulp and rub through wire sieve into a small saucepan, adding two tablespoons good cream, half ounce butter, three saltspoons salt, three saltspoons sugar and two saltspoons white pepper. Thoroughly mix with wooden spoon while heating three minutes. Dress the puree on a large hot dish, well spread over. Arrange twelve freshly poached eggs over the puree and serve.
A pea puree with poached eggs set over it, from the era when "St. Germain" on a menu meant green peas. Two things need adjusting: the boiling time and the amount of equipment.
- Fifty minutes is far too longModern shelled peas, fresh or frozen, are tender in 3 to 5 minutes and lose their colour and sweetness long before the half hour. The long boil may reflect peas left to grow larger and starchier than we buy now. Cook until just soft, then drain immediately.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of salt is three-quarters of a teaspoon, the same of sugar, and two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon — a genuinely peppery puree.
- A pint of shelled peasThat is a volume measure, roughly 2 cups, about 10 oz or 300 g shelled weight. A 10 oz bag of frozen peas is about right.
- Mortar and sieveThe pounding and sieving exist to break down tough pea skins. A food processor followed by a pass through a fine sieve or food mill gives the same smooth result; skipping the sieve leaves the puree grainy with hulls.
- Reheating the pureeThree minutes over heat with the cream and butter is to warm through and tighten it slightly, not to cook further. Keep it thick enough to hold the eggs without their sliding — it should mound on the spoon.
- The eggsTwelve poached eggs at once is easier if you poach them ahead into cold water, then slip them back into hot water for 30 seconds to reheat just before serving. Trim the ragged whites before arranging.
- YieldTwelve eggs on a platter serves six as a lunch or supper dish, or twelve as a first course.
"À la Saint-Germain" is standard French kitchen shorthand for green peas, generally traced to the market gardens around Saint-Germain-en-Laye west of Paris, which supplied the court and the city with early peas; by the nineteenth century the name had hardened into a classification term, attached to pea soups, pea purees and garnishes of peas in escoffier-era menu French. The dish itself belongs to a whole family of "eggs on a bed" preparations — Florentine on spinach, for instance — that let a kitchen serve something warm, soft and quickly assembled at a lunch or supper table.