Poached eggs

I have started to make plans for the next Cudgel War event. The event is going to be in July so there isn’t that big hurry yet. We (Ulf and I) are going to make all the lunches and snacks (besides Wednesday snack. I try to find someone to do that so we can have one day off from kitchen. It is good thing since the event is going to last about nine days). But anyway I don’t have theme for lunches yet. Last time we made food from different time period and area starting in Anglo-Saxon food (or was it Viking? Yes it was and the seckond day was Anglo-Saxon, silly me) and closing in Elizabethan times. It was fun and I learned a lot. This time I was thinking about maybe to make food only from certain time period and area. I am not sure yet.

But anyway today I decided to try made some poached eggs. I have not actually made poached eggs before, but I have been in a kitchen while someone else has made them. So I know that it is not the easiest thing to do. This time I decided to use a recipe from Cindy Renfrow’s book Take a thousand eggs or more: A collection of 15th century recipes. Here is the recipe from the second volume and some thoughts about it.

Poached Eggs

Take Eggs, break them, and seethe them in hot Water; then take them Up as whole as thou may; then take flour, and mix with milk & cast thereto Sugar or Honey, & a little powdered Ginger, and boil all together, & color with Saffron; and lay thine Eggs in dishes, & cast on powder enough. White powder is best.

My thoughts:
eggs
water
(salt)

Sauce:
1 c milk (about 2,5 dl.. I am not good with measurements I usually don’t use them)
2 T flour
1 T honey (I decided to use honey)
pinch of ginger
pinch of saffron

Mix all the sauce ingredients together and boil carefully. Make poached eggs in boiling water with salt. And that’s all. Garnish with a little ginger. There isn’t any mention about salt in the recipe from the collection. The dish tastes better if you put salt into water and you can also sprinkle little salt on the top of the dish as well. Some of the modern recipes of poached eggs suggest that you should put some vinegar into boiling water as well because that way egg stays better together. I didn’t use because I wanted to try this without the vinegar.