Oeufs au Cheval à la Nero Wolfe

This dish appears in Too Many Cooks, a classic Rex Stout mystery first published in 1938. It’s one of two dozen elaborate dishes prepared at a meeting of the world’s greatest chefs – at which, naturally, someone is murdered. Oeufs au Cheval (Eggs on Horseback) are intended as a late-night refreshment for the chef-attendees after an evening’s sauce tasting contest, but, owing to the murder, the dish is never eaten. As the story unfolds, however, if those eggs hadn’t been on the menu Nero Wolfe might never have been able to solve the crime.

Be that as it may, Stout’s Nero Wolfe Cookbook provides recipes for all the dishes featured in the mystery, and I’ve been longing to try this one. Its moment arrived this week because I happened to have a large piece of “leftover” foie gras, which is a key ingredient.

This is a recipe that encourages excess, and I cooperated. Here’s what I did.

I cut four slices of my homemade white bread, trimmed them into circles, and browned them in butter. Already at this point, that took more butter than the whole recipe – unrealistically, in my opinion – calls for.

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I laid them on a baking pan and spread them with foie gras. The recipe wants only an ounce of pâté de foie gras for four slices, but that seemed awfully stingy, so I used about three times as much of my bloc foie gras. Which, in the aftermath, proved to be just right.

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Then I fried eggs to place on top of the bread. To keep them the proper shape, I buttered the English muffin rings that I’d used as a pattern for cutting the bread circles and cooked the eggs inside them. That worked well, and I didn’t hesitate to add more butter for the frying.

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Once the sunnyside-up eggs were mounted on their horses, I topped each with grated parmigiano, a sprinkling of paprika, and additional melted butter. (Incidentally, it’s that paprika that provided the essential clue to the murder. Read the book and see!)

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Just a few minutes under the broiler to melt and brown the cheese, and they were ready to eat.

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They were heavenly. Nothing fancy, of course! Oh no: only what you’d expect from mouthfuls combining butter-fried bread, foie gras, runny egg yolk, butter-soft egg white, gratineed cheese, and yet more butter. Totally luscious, very Nero-Wolfian, and a great indulgence. I must make more of these for the holidays.