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Mushrooms with Eggs
(A Hungarian recipe.) This is excellent. Peel and slice 1 pound of fresh mushrooms. Cook them until tender--remember that mushrooms, like liver and kidney, must not be cooked too long or they will be tough--in sufficient white broth to cover, adding some butter, onion, herbs, and seasoning. Press this through a sieve on an earthen plate, lay on it, very carefully, four or more poached eggs. Add salt and pepper, and serve.
A short recipe that leaves out most of its numbers. The result is a loose mushroom purée under poached eggs, and it stands or falls on how thick you let the purée get.
- White brothA pale unthickened stock of veal or chicken, made without browning the bones or aromatics. Any light chicken stock works; use one that is not heavily salted, since the purée reduces and concentrates.
- Cooking the mushroomsThe recipe's own warning is the hinge. Sliced mushrooms in simmering broth are tender in five to eight minutes; past that they tighten and turn squeaky. Take them off as soon as a slice yields easily to a knife.
- "Sufficient to cover"Barely cover the mushrooms, no more. Too much broth gives a soup that will not sit on a plate, and you will have to reduce it hard afterwards, overcooking the mushrooms in the process.
- Herbs and onionUnspecified, as was normal. A small onion, a few parsley stalks and a sprig of thyme suit the dish; a Hungarian cook would likely have finished with sweet paprika, though the recipe does not say so.
- Pressing through a sieveA food mill or a short blitz in a blender does the same work in a fraction of the time. Sieve afterwards only if you want it perfectly smooth. Aim for the texture of thick cream, so the eggs sit rather than sink.
- "An earthen plate"A shallow earthenware or stoneware serving dish, warmed. It matters mainly because the purée and the eggs both cool fast; a cold plate kills the dish.
- PoachingPoach the eggs while the purée finishes, in water with a splash of vinegar, three minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Lift them onto a towel to drain before they go on the purée, or the plate floods with water.
- YieldOne pound of mushrooms and four eggs serves four as a first course or two as a light supper, with bread.
The recipe arrives stripped down, with quantities and finishing touches assumed rather than written. A Hungarian cook might well have reached for paprika and sour cream, and neither is mentioned. What survives the crossing is the structure, which is a real one in Central European cooking — a soft savoury base with eggs set on top, close in spirit to the many mushroom dishes built on wild forest fungi in Hungary and its neighbours. The aside comparing mushrooms to liver and kidney is the most useful line in the recipe: liver and kidney certainly toughen with prolonged heat, and the writer applies the same caution to mushrooms.