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Œufs Farcis
Have six fresh eggs; put them ten minutes in boiling water; cool them in cold water; peel them; cut them in two lengthwise; remove the yolks with care. Put the yolks into a mortar or chopping bowl; add three tablespoonfuls of good butter, same quantity of cooked lean ham, one teaspoonful of chopped parsly, two raw eggs, one even saltspoonful of white pepper, no salt; pound or chop very nicely and see that it is well mixed and smooth. Fill up then every half of the boiled eggs with the mixture. Smooth the top with a silver knife dipped in cold water. Put the balance of the stuffing into a well buttered round platter. Arrange each egg in it; pour over each one-half a teaspoonful of melted butter. Place five minutes in a hot oven. Decorate the dish with very thin slices of cold ham and here and there a small bunch of water cress. This dish is fine for luncheon.
The title is a mangled œufs farcis — stuffed eggs. Unlike the modern deviled egg, this one is bound with raw egg and baked, so the filling sets firm rather than staying creamy.
- The hinge: the raw eggs are a binder, not a moistenerTwo raw eggs into six cooked yolks makes a loose forcemeat that firms in the oven. Judge doneness by the filling being set and no longer glossy, not by the five minutes on the clock; the bed of stuffing under the eggs is thicker than the caps and needs to reach 160F throughout.
- "A hot oven"Roughly 400-450F in period usage. At that heat five minutes will set the caps but is unlikely to set the whole platter of surplus stuffing; a bed of any depth will probably want closer to 10-15 minutes.
- SaltspoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. The instruction "no salt" is deliberate: the cooked lean ham and the butter carry it, and the filling turns harsh if you add more.
- Boiling the eggsTen minutes in already-boiling water gives fully set yolks; the cold-water plunge stops the cooking and loosens the shells, and it also limits the grey-green ring, which comes from prolonged heat at the yolk surface.
- Mortar or chopping bowlA food processor does this in seconds, but pulse rather than run it — the ham should stay in fine flecks, not become paste. Have the butter properly soft first or the mixture will break into grains.
- The silver knifeSilver was probably specified because a carbon-steel blade of the period could discolour a pale egg mixture. Note that sulfur in egg yolk tarnishes silver, so a plastic or stainless spatula dipped in cold water is the better modern choice.
- Ham"Cooked lean ham" means a boiled or baked ham off the bone, not thin deli slices cured with added water — the latter will make the filling wet.
- YieldTwelve halves, plus the surplus stuffing baked underneath; a luncheon dish for four, or a first course for six.
The garbled headword stands for œufs farcis, and its presence in an American household compendium says something about the period: French dish names carried prestige at the luncheon table even when the spelling did not survive into print. Stuffed eggs themselves are much older than the French name — Roman cooks dressed boiled eggs with pepper and herbs, and medieval and Renaissance European kitchens filled halved whites with pounded yolk, cheese and spice long before the American "deviled" egg fixed the form as a cold picnic dish. What distinguishes this version is that it is a hot dish, bound with raw egg and finished in the oven, which puts it closer to a small baked forcemeat than to the buffet egg.