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Poached Eggs, Tarragon
Place three quarts water in a saucepan with a tablespoon salt and two tablespoons tarragon vinegar, and as soon as it comes to a boil carefully crack six fresh eggs and poach them for three minutes. Carefully lift up with the skimmer and arrange over three freshly prepared pieces of toast. Prepare six more in a similar way, and sprinkle over all two teaspoons freshly chopped tarragon leaves. Have an ounce butter in a frying pan, and toss on the fire until on a nice light brown colour, pour over the eggs and serve.
A plain French treatment of poached eggs: tarragon in the water, tarragon over the top, browned butter to finish. The one thing to get right is the water — it should be barely trembling, not at the rolling boil the text implies.
- Bring to a boil, then drop the heatEggs cracked into water at a full boil will shred. Let it come up, then pull it back to a bare simmer with only occasional bubbles before the eggs go in.
- The poaching liquidThree quarts water, 1 tablespoon salt, 2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar. The vinegar is there to set the whites quickly and to season them faintly; ordinary white wine vinegar works if you have no tarragon vinegar, though it loses the anise note.
- Three minutes means softThree minutes in gently simmering water gives a set white and a liquid yolk, which is the intent. Lift with a slotted spoon and blot on a towel, or the toast turns to paste.
- Quantities and yieldTwelve eggs in two batches of six, over what reads as six pieces of toast — the "three freshly prepared pieces" appears to mean three per batch. Two eggs on toast per person, so six servings.
- Toss on the fire until light brownThis is beurre noisette. Melt the butter over moderate heat, keep it moving until the milk solids color and it smells of hazelnuts, and pour it out at once — it goes from brown to burnt in seconds.
- An ounce of butter is thinOne ounce is 2 tablespoons for twelve eggs. Three to four ounces browned gives every plate something, and the extra volume makes the browning easier to judge.
- Fresh tarragon onlyDried tarragon is flat and dusty here. Two teaspoons chopped fresh leaves is right; add them to the eggs just before the hot butter, which releases the aroma.
- Egg freshness matters mechanicallyOlder whites spread in the water. Use the freshest eggs you have, and note that a liquid yolk is not pasteurized — worth avoiding for anyone advised against undercooked eggs.
Tarragon — estragon in French kitchens — is the herb that most clearly marks a dish as belonging to the French repertoire rather than the English one, and it appears here as vinegar in the poaching water and chopped raw over the eggs, set off by browned butter. The book is Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book, published in 1906 by a cook long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes are largely brief professional formulas of this kind: a restaurant cook's shorthand, assuming the reader already knows how a poached egg behaves and needing only the flavoring told to him. Tarragon vinegar was a widely available bottled pantry item in this period, which is why the recipe reaches for it without explanation. The finish of butter browned to noisette and poured over is a long-established French treatment, applied to eggs, skate, brains and asparagus alike.