Eggs à la jardinière (egg and Béchamel bake)
Easy and decadent-tasting. If you ever wished that eggs and Béchamel could be intertwined, this is the baked egg dish for you!
Author: Agnes
Fortress of Louisbourg Soldier Bread
Soldier bread is a dense and rustic loaf that sustained soldiers at the Fortress of Louisbourg.
Eggs à la bourgeoise (an easy egg/bread/cheese bake)
This is one of the first recipes we tried from From the Hearth, and it’s keeper! Eggs, gruyère cheese, bread, butter … yum! Plus, it’s really quick and easy (unlike some dishes we’ve tried from the 18th century).
It’s so easy, this bougie egg recipe would be great for kids to take on making for dinner.
Although the original recipe suggests this serves 6-8, if you are using it as a main dish it really serves 3-4.
Ingredients
5-6 thin slices of bread, crusts removed 6 thin slices of gruyère cheese 8-10 eggs 1 tbsp butter pinch nutmeg salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Preheat oven to 300F. Spread butter on a baking dish (we used a 9x9 inch pan) or pie plate. Place bread slices to cover bottom. (Recipe suggests rolling flat with rolling pin - didn't do that). Cover bread with slices of gruyère cheese. Break eggs over the cheese. Sprinkle eggs with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Bake at 300F for 25-30 minutes, or until cheese melts and eggs are cooked to desired firmness.
This recipe was really fast to put together. I got it in the oven in under 10 minutes, and that included cutting the bread and the cheese.
I used the full 10 eggs in this dish – that really gave me coverage of all the bread and cheese.
I found that I could tell when the eggs were cooked pretty easily, but I could tell nothing about the level of meltiness of the cheese, so that instruction wasn’t so useful.
The first time I made this was for a quick weeknight dinner, so we were already eating by the time I thought to take a photo – sorry! Will update the images when I make this again.
We used a nice French loaf (white bread) for our bread base in this dish, but I think multigrain or whole wheat would also be nice.
Gruyère is one of my favourite cheeses, so we have it on hand fairly often. If you wanted to substitute something else, I’d suggest a fairly strong-flavoured meltable cheese like Emmental or similar. I’m not a big cheddar fan, but I think a good cheddar could work too.
The Verdict
Eggs à la bourgeoise is a winner! Fast and easy, and way more tasty than “fast and easy” usually gets you.
Try this one, and let us know how it goes for you in the comments!
Cabbage farci (cabbage stuffed with meat)
My adventures in stuffing a very large cabbage with meat. Learn from my mistakes! And use a very large pot …
Ham pâté (ham wrapped in pastry)
Wrap a whole ham (plus some other ground meat) in pastry, and pour in wine and brandy. Create a ham pâté feast!
Eggs farcis (breaded egg and veggie balls)
There are a lot of really delicious egg dishes in From the Hearth. This one creates delicious fried balls with chard and mushrooms using hard-boiled eggs. These would be perfect for appetizers or as a veggie-filled side dish.
I’ve modified the instructions a bit to fill in some missing steps.
While this is called “farcis”, the eggs are not stuffed in the regular sense. It’s more that they comprise part of a sort of vegetable-based “forcemeat”. Check out the other “farci” or stuffed dishes we’ve attempted, including cucumber and cabbage.
Ingredients
6 hard-boiled eggs 1 cup greens (chard or spinach) 2 tbsp mushrooms, chopped 1 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper 1 tbsp mixed parsley, sorrel and chervil, finely minced pinch ground nutmeg Coating: flour 1 beaten egg fine bread crumbs Frying: butter
I only had parsley (not sorrel or chervil) and used beet tops as my greens.
Instructions
Cook greens in boiling water for 3-4 minutes. Drain well, and chop coarsely. Sauté in butter to remove moisture, then let cool. Cut eggs in half. Scoop out yolks into mixing bowl. (Keep whites). Mash egg yolks together with the greens, mushrooms, herbs, and seasonings. Form mixture into small balls. Flour balls, coat with beaten egg, and roll in bread crumbs. Fry in butter until golden brown. Cut egg whites in strips and serve as a side dish (optionally in a small amount of your favourite sauce).
These were quite sticky balls to form. This is likely in part because my default is soft boiled eggs, so the yolks were not fully cooked. I was surprised that the seemingly small number of cooked yolks kept all that other stuff bound together.
I did not watch these closely enough – they got a little too dark.
The Verdict
These were pretty delicious little morsels. The name of the dish is a bit deceiving – you would not think “eggs” when eating the balls. The added egg white strips were good too, but didn’t really go together with the balls in a logical way. Definitely would make this again!
Did you make this? What would you do with the egg whites? Leave a comment!
Cucumbers farcis (cucumbers stuffed with meat)
A surprising recipe from the 18th century – cucumbers stuffed with meat and poached.
From the Hearth
A lot of our recent culinary adventures are starting with this book: From the Hearth: Recipes from the World of 18th Century Louisbourg by Hope Dunton We picked this up at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, probably the most impressive historical recreation in …
Banana What?!
We’ve been interested in historic recipes for a while, but only tried making them here and there. Given the current pandemic (historic in its own way, and keeping us all close to home), we’ve been cooking up and tasting a bunch of dishes from the past. We are going to share the ups and downs of this process here.
The blog title comes from an unusual recipe we tried from “Wartime Recipes from the Maritimes 1939-1945”. Look out for a post explaining this odd dish soon!