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Poached Eggs with Sorrel
Prepare a puree of sorrel. Dress on a hot dish; nicely smooth the surface. Carefully crack six fresh eggs into three quarts boiling water with a tablespoon salt and two tablespoons vinegar; poach for three minutes, lift them up with a skimmer, trim a little, arrange them on the sorrel; prepare six others in the same way, dress and serve.
A two-part dish that assumes you already know how to make sorrel puree; the recipe is really about the poaching. Twelve eggs on a bed of sorrel serves six as a light lunch or supper course.
- The sorrel pureeSorrel collapses like spinach and loses a great deal of its bulk, so allow a generous quantity of leaves -- on the order of 2 lb -- for six servings. Stew the stripped leaves in butter over low heat until they melt to a coarse green paste, then season; some period versions finish it with a little cream or a spoonful of thick bechamel to keep it from being watery under the eggs.
- Use a nonreactive panSorrel is high in oxalic acid and will take on a metallic taste and a grey cast in cast iron, bare aluminium or unlined copper. Stainless, enamel or a well-glazed earthenware pot keeps the colour and the flavour clean.
- Poach in two batches, as writtenThe instruction to do six and then six again is not padding. Crowding a pot drops the water temperature and the whites tangle; twelve eggs at once in three quarts would give you one large egg raft.
- Water, salt and vinegarThree quarts, one tablespoon salt and two tablespoons vinegar is a workable ratio, though modern recipes differ considerably on how much vinegar (and whether any salt) to add. Keep the water at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, or the whites shred no matter how fresh the eggs.
- Three minutesThat gives a set white and a liquid yolk in a large egg, which is what the dish wants: the yolk is the sauce for the sorrel. Add about 30 seconds if the eggs go in straight from the refrigerator.
- "Trim a little"Lift each egg onto a folded towel and cut away the ragged skirt of white with a knife or the edge of a round cutter. Cracking the eggs first into a cup and letting the loosest white drain off through a fine sieve reduces the trimming considerably.
- Holding the first batchSlide the trimmed eggs into a bowl of warm, lightly salted water while the second six poach, then drain them on a towel before dressing. They will not overcook and the whole dish reaches the table at one temperature.
- ServingThe sorrel goes on a warmed platter, smoothed flat, with the eggs set on top in two rows. Croutons fried in butter around the edge are a common accompaniment and give the soft dish something to lean on.
Sorrel was a kitchen-garden staple across northern Europe long before lemons were cheap, valued for the sharpness its oxalic acid gives to soups, sauces and purees; the French name oseille and the English "sorrel" both descend from words meaning sour. Oeufs pochés à l'oseille is standard French bourgeois cooking of the nineteenth century, and the pairing is logical rather than fanciful: the acid of the puree cuts a rich yolk in the same way a vinaigrette cuts a hard-boiled egg. Its appearance in a book called The International Cook Book reflects the period's habit of treating French practice as the baseline of good cooking, and the terse assumption that the reader can already "prepare a puree of sorrel" tells you the herb was still expected in a garden. It has since largely fallen out of American use — perhaps in part because it does not ship or store well, wilting within a day or two of cutting — and it survives mostly in farmers' markets and home plots.