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Poached Eggs (Normandy Fry an onion clove)
(Normandy.) Fry an onion, 1/2 clove of garlic,--which may be omitted,--some parsley, thyme, and a bayleaf, in 1 ounce of butter. Add 1/2 pint of red wine (or cider.), the same of consomme, or white stock, and cook until well blended. Add salt and pepper, strain it, and pour around 6 eggs, poached in vinegar and water, drained, and laid on toast, previously dipped in hot water to soften it. Garnish with parsley.
A red-wine egg dish in the Burgundian/Norman manner, written for cooks who already knew how to poach an egg. Two things need attention: the sauce is thin as written, and the toast instruction reads like a misprint but is not.
- The measurementsHalf a pint is one cup in American measure, so you are building a sauce from 1 cup wine or cider plus 1 cup stock. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- Cook until well blended means reduceCook until well blended -- The text does not say how far to cook the liquids down. Read as a reduction it works better: simmering the 2 cups of wine and stock down towards 1 cup before straining gives a sauce that clings rather than a wine-flavoured broth. Ten to fifteen minutes at a brisk simmer will do it, though this is an interpretation, not an instruction in the original.
- ThickeningThe original calls for no thickener, and a properly made consomme or white stock of the period would have carried more gelatine than most commercial stock does. If yours is thin, whisk 1 to 2 tablespoons of softened butter kneaded with an equal amount of flour into the strained sauce and simmer a minute.
- Cider versionThe Normandy reading is the cider one. Use dry hard cider, not sweet apple juice, or the sauce turns cloying against the vinegar in the eggs.
- Poaching in vinegar and waterAbout a tablespoon of vinegar per quart of barely simmering water, three minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Lift the eggs onto a towel to drain; undrained poaching water will thin the sauce on the plate.
- The softened toastNot an error; the recipe says plainly to dip the toast in hot water to soften it. A softened base is less likely to shatter under the sauce while still holding its shape. Some cooks prefer to dip in stock instead of water, though the recipe specifies water.
- Garlic and aromaticsHalf a clove, with the recipe adding that it may be omitted altogether, suggests a readership wary of garlic. A whole clove will not unbalance anything. The parsley, thyme and bay are strained out, so use stems and whole sprigs.
- YieldSix eggs on toast; at two eggs each that is about three servings as a lunch or supper dish, or six if served as a first course. The recipe itself gives no yield and does not say how many pieces of toast.
This is the standard French treatment of eggs in red wine, the same idea as oeufs en meurette from Burgundy, where poached eggs stand in for the fish or meat that would normally sit in a wine and stock reduction. The book files it under Normandy and offers cider as an alternative to the wine, which is what makes the attribution plausible: Normandy is cider and butter country rather than wine country, and dry cider is often said to stand in for red wine in Norman kitchens. The vinegar in the poaching water and the toast softened in hot liquid are both marks of the period, when a cook was expected to serve poached eggs on a base that would not disintegrate before the plate reached the table.