Œufs en meurette

In Escoffier's Guide culinaire, à la bourguignonne means cooked with red wine. His œufs à la bourguignonne, poached or soft-boiled, are dressed on toasted, buttered household bread and coated with red wine that has been flavoured, strained, reduced by half and bound with beurre manié. A note adds that "according to the local principle" the eggs are poached directly in the flavoured wine and served on toast rubbed with garlic. That local method is the one given here.

Escoffier keeps the word meurette for a fish stew: the matelote dite meurette, any fish cooked in red wine, flamed with marc and served with garlic croutons. Today œufs en meurette is the usual name for the egg dish. Restaurant versions are often richer: the kitchen of the Château du Clos de Vougeot builds its sauce on stock, smoked belly, veal and beef, adds a square of dark chocolate, and garnishes the eggs with lardons, small onions and mushrooms, the garnish of bœuf bourguignon.

Wine poaches eggs as water does, but it is acidic and coloured: the whites set quickly and turn violet. Keep the liquid just below a simmer and add the eggs one at a time so the temperature does not drop. Three minutes gives a set white and a runny yolk.

The poaching wine then becomes the sauce. Reducing it by half concentrates flavour and acidity; the beurre manié thickens it, and the final butter, whisked in off the heat, rounds the acidity and gives the shine. Restaurant kitchens that poach in large numbers often use acidulated water instead and hold the eggs in warm water until service, as the Clos de Vougeot recipe does.