[Modern cookery, in all its branches

Take for this purpose a wide and delicately clean pan about halffilled with the clearest spring- water ; throw in a small saltspoonful of salt, and place it over a fire quite free from smoke. Break some new laid eggs into separate cups, and do this with care, that the yolks may not be injured. When the water boils, draw back the pan, glide the eggs gently into it, and let them stand until the whites appear almost set, which will be in about a minute : then, without shaking them, move the pan over the fire, and just simmer them from two minutes and a half to three minutes. Lift them out separately with a slice, trim quickly off the ragged edges, and serve them upon dressed spinach, or upon minced veal, turkey, or chicken ; or dish them for an invalid, upon delicately toasted bread, sliced thick, and freed from crust : it is an improvement to have the bread buttered, but it is then less wholesome. Comparative time of poaching eggs. Swans’ eggs, 5 to 6 minutes. (In basin, 10 minutes.) Turkeys* eggs 4 minutes. Hens’ eggs, 3 to 3| minutes. Guinea-fowls’, 2 to 3 minutes. Bantams’, 2 minutes, Obs. — All eggs may be poached without boiling if kept just at simmering point, but one boil quite at last will assist to detach them from the stewpan, from which they should always be very carefully lifted on what is called a fish or egg-slice. There are pans made on purpose for poaching and frying them in good form ; but they do not, we believe, answer particularly well. If broken into cups slightly rubbed with butter, and simmered in them, their roundness of shape will be best preserved. POACHED EGGS WITH GRAVY. (ENTREMETS.) (Eufs Poches an Jus. Dress the eggs as above, giving them as good an appearance as possible, lay them into a very hot dish, and sauce them with some rich, clear, boiling veal gravy, or with some Espagnole. Eacn egg, lor variety, may be dished upon a crouton of bread cut with a fluted paste-cutter, and fried a pale brown : the sauce should then be poured round, not over them. Poaching is the best mode of dressing a swan’s egg,* as it renders it more than any other delicate in flavour ; it is usually served on a bed of spinach. Only the eggs of quite young swans are suited to the * We fear that want of space must compel us to omit some other receipts for swans’ eggs, which we had prepared for this chapter. G G [chap. x%xt. table : one is sufficient for a dish. It may be laid on a large crouton of fried bread, and sauced with highly flavoured gravy, or with tomata- sauce well seasoned with eschalots. ŒUFS AU PLAT. A pewter or any other metal plate or dish which will bear the fire, must be used for these. Just melt a slice of butter in it, then put in some very fresh eggs broken as for poaching ; strew a little pepper and salt on the top of each, and place them over a gentle fire until the whites are quite set, but keep them free from colour. This is a very common mode of preparing eggs on the continent ; but there is generally a slight rawness of the surface of the yolks which is in a measure removed by ladling the boiling butter over them with a spoon as they are cooking, though a salamander held above them for a minute would have a better effect. Four or five minutes will dress them. Obs. — We hope for an opportunity of inserting further receipts for dishes of eggs at the end of this volume.