The spirit of cookery

Poached eggs are eggs boiled after the removal of the shell. The cook who wishes to display her skill in poaching, says Kitchiner, must endeavour to procure eggs that have been laid a couple of days. Those that are quite new-laid are so milky that, take all the care you can, your cooking of them will seldom procure you the praise of being a prime poacher ; on the other hand, you must have fresh eggs, or it is equally impossible. The beauty of the poached egg is for the yolk to be seen blushing through the white, which should only be just sufficiently hardened to form a transparent veil for the egg. To poach eggs, have a stewpan half filled with clear boiling water on the fire ; add some salt and a little vinegar ; break an egg into a cup, remove the stewpan from the fire, and gently slip the egg into the water ; let it stand till the white be set, then put the pan on the fire, and as soon as the water boils take out the egg with a slice or straining ladle ; trim off the ragged edges of the white with a pair of scissors, and place it on toast or any other suitable basis. Or break each egg into a separate dariole mould, and slip one after the other into the stewpan containing boiling water mixed with a tablespoonful of vinegar and some salt ; let them boil for two minutes, and withdraw them in the order in which you entered them, or simultaneously by means of a wire basket. The bread to receive the poached egg should be a little larger than the egg, and about a quarter of an inch thick ; it should be toasted on one side only, with or without butter, only just of a yellow colour, never brown, which would make it bitter. You may flavour the toast, if desired, very cautiously with a few drops of vinegar, or some anchovy essence, or anchovy butter, or fillets of anchovies. Poached eggs have many opportunities in cookery ; they are canonical as accompaniments to fried streaky bacon, or ham, for breakfast ; they are suitable for a small snatch-meal -which a person may have to get at short notice, and agreeable garnishes to several entremets, such as boiled spinach with butter. Fried eggs are, like their boiled brethren, a dish easily made and easily spoiled ; in particular, to make them a little coloured while preventing them from becoming hard and tough is difficult. They are generally fried in a flat pan, which causes them to spread excessively ; but there are special pans now obtainable which have a little well or excavation for each egg, so that the whites are kept together, and prevented from thinning out and frizzing up. In this apparatus eggs can also easily be baked in the oven. Fried eggs may be eaten with a little browned butter, and are much improved in taste by the addition, as mere zests, of acidulated gravies. Some discountenance the browning of the fried eggs, and we are inclined to endorse that view, [illustration: * (Rufs pochis were made by the ‘ Cuisinier Imperial de 1808 ’ and the ‘ Cuisinier Royal de 1839,' one of many opportunities', ‘pour se donner par ecrit un faux air de magnificence.’ To make a little sauce for fifteen poached eggs you were to have ready cooked ‘green,’ or a little underdone, twelve roaal ducks ; you were to score them down to the bone, collect the juice, and pour it over the eggs.