Printanier Moulded Eggs

Œufs moulés printaniers (moulded eggs with spring vegetables) teach one exact lesson: gentle heat lets an egg take a beautiful shape without turning hard. Before you touch a pan, know that the bain-marie must barely tremble. The coloured vegetable lining catches the eye, but the tender white and flowing yolk are what make the dish worth eating.

The original recipe assumed a rack of hexagonal moulds, several cooks tending vegetables in separate pans, and a saucier keeping cream sauce ready for service. At home, use four small dariole moulds or ramekins, blanch every vegetable in one saucepan, then clean that saucepan and make the sauce in it. The six sides are presentation, not technique. Separate pans are brigade scaffolding and can go; the Chartreuse-fashion mosaic, the bain-marie, and the prescribed proportion of Printanier butter to sauce are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

You will press firm, bright vegetables into cold butter, settle an egg inside each little mosaic, and turn it out onto crisp toast with ivory sauce pooled at the centre of the dish. Work patiently when you line the moulds, but save your sharpest attention for the poaching water. Keep it below a simmer. That is the step that decides everything.