Soyer's standard cookery

Garnish a dish with a large tablespoonful of minced onions cooked in butter and unbrowned. Break the eggs over the garnish, sprinkle with a small tablespoonful of dry, grated Parmesan cheese, and cook in a fierce oven so that slight gratin may form as soon as the eggs are done. Parmentier Eggs. Bake some potatoes in the oven. Open them, from above, with an oval fancy cutter; remove the pulp from the inside, rub it through a sieve, and make a smooth puree of it. Half-fill the potato-shells with this puree, break an egg into each, besprinkle with cream, and cook in the oven. Replace the part of the baked shell removed in the first instance, and serve on a napkin. Eggs a la Portugaise. Put a tablespoonful of tomato fondue into a dish. Break the eggs upon this, season, and cook. Between the eggs and at each end of the dish put a little heap of tomato fondue, and on each heap drop a pinch of chopped parsley. Eggs a la Reine. Cook the eggs in an omelette-pan, and trim with a round fancy cutter. Put each egg upon a small disc of Duchesse potatoes, of the same size as the egg, previously browned in the oven. Arrange the eggs in a circle round the dish; in the middle put a chicken mincemeat, and surround with a border of Supreme sauce. Poached Eggs. Use perfectly fresh eggs, for it is quite impossible to obtain an even poaching without. Have ready a saucepan containing boiling salted water (onethird of an ounce of salt per quart of water), slightly acidulated with vinegar. Break the eggs over that part of the water which is actually boiling. Do not put more than six eggs at a time into the same saucepan, then the poaching will be effected more equally. As soon as the eggs are in the water, let the latter simmer. The egg is poached when the white has enveloped the yolk, and when it may be touched without breaking. The usual time allowed for poaching is three minutes. Withdraw the eggs by means of a slice; dip them into cold water, trim their whites, and put them back into moderately warm water until ready to serve. The Cooking of Soft-Boiled Eggs. These ought to be very fresh, as in the case of poached eggs. Keep the water boiling; plunge the eggs therein as directed; leave them to cook for six minutes from the time the water has regained the boiling-point; drain, steep for a moment in a bowl of cold water, and shell the eggs carefully. Keep them in a moderately-salted hot water until ready to serve. Poached Eggs Argenteuil. Garnish the bottom of some tartlet crusts with cooked asparagus cut into pieces, and six green asparagus-heads, about one and one-half inches in length, arranged starwise. Place an egg, coated with cream sauce mixed with half its volume of asparagus puree, upon each tartlet. Poached Eggs a 1'Aurore. Coat the eggs with Aurora sauce, and dish them on rounds of toast. Poached Eggs en Berceau. Bake some potatoes in the oven. Cut each in half, lengthwise, with the point of a small knife, and remove the pulp. Coat the interiors with a chicken mincemeat mixed with cream, and place an egg coated with Aurora sauce in each. Poached Eggs a la Bohemienne.