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Eggs (Carmelite Convent recipe)
(Carmelite Convent recipe.) Butter a dish, pour into it a puree of asparagus tips, parboiled with herbs and seasoning, drained, mixed with a cup of cream, or white broth, and pressed through a sieve. Arrange this evenly, and break over it carefully four or more fresh eggs. Bake until the eggs are firm. This can also be made with a foundation, or mattress of spinach, or any other vegetable. EGGS (a la Gruyere.).
Melt 1/4 pound of grated Gruyere cheese with a teaspoonful of butter, 1 cup of chicken broth, some chopped onion and parsley, nutmeg, and salt. When well blended, add four well-beaten eggs, stir until firm, and serve on toast.
Two convent-style egg dishes: eggs baked on a bed of vegetable purée, and a soft cheese-and-broth scramble served on toast. Neither gives an oven temperature or a time, and both hinge on stopping the eggs early.
- Oven temperature and timeNo heat is specified. Bake at 350F for roughly 12-18 minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks still tremble. Carryover heat in a hot buttered dish will keep cooking them after they leave the oven, so pull them a shade under "firm."
- White brothThis means a pale unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, made from bones not roasted first. Any light chicken stock does the job; use low-sodium, since the purée is already seasoned.
- The asparagus puréeParboil the tips only until tender, drain them hard, then sieve. If the purée is loose it will weep under the eggs and the dish turns watery. It should mound softly on a spoon before the eggs go on.
- Breaking the eggs onCrack each egg into a cup first and slide it onto the purée, spaced apart. Broken yolks bleed into the vegetable base and the dish loses its point.
- Gruyere quantitiesA quarter pound is 4 oz, about 1 1/2 cups loosely grated. With a full cup of broth this is a very slack mixture; it thickens into soft curds rather than a set custard.
- The hinge on the Gruyere eggsCook over low heat, stirring constantly, and take the pan off while the mixture still looks slightly too loose. Cheese and egg over high heat will curdle and squeeze out liquid, leaving grainy curds in a puddle on the toast.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a light hand; pre-ground nutmeg is flat. It works alongside the onion and parsley rather than carrying the dish alone.
- YieldEach recipe serves two as a light main or four as a first course. The baked version scales easily by widening the dish; keep the puree a shallow, even layer so the eggs sit level.
Convent kitchens were long regarded as reliable sources of frugal, well-made cookery, and recipes credited to a particular order or house circulated widely in nineteenth-century collections. The Carmelites, an austere contemplative order with houses across France, Spain and Italy, kept meatless days that made eggs, cheese and garden vegetables the backbone of the table, which is exactly what these two dishes are built from: asparagus or spinach from the convent plot, eggs, a little cream or light stock, and cheese. The technique in the first recipe, eggs baked on a bed of purée, is close to preparations such as eggs à la florentine — the term oeufs sur le plat normally describes eggs baked in a shallow dish — and the note that any other vegetable will serve as a "mattress" is the practical instinct of a cook working with whatever the garden has given up that week.