[Sca-cooks] coddling an egg

[Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy]

Marion MacGregor wrote:
>
> Greetings are sent to the List,
>
> I have a mundane friend who had asked me what it means "to
> coddle an egg"  after a few side jokes (remember Iam
> married to Puck) I am stumped.  What does the term "to
> coddle an egg" truly mean and what is the importance of it
> in cooking?  BTW this is from a recipe to make a dressing
> for a salad

Coddled egg yolks appear frequently in connection with Caesar Salad
recipes. Coddling usually means a very gentle poaching, or sometimes a
very gentle cooking in a device or pan which suspends the egg over
nearly boiling water -- kinda like a double boiler with indentations in
the bottom for holding individual eggs.

Your friend can just as easily soft-boil an egg and use the yolk, to get
a similar effect, unless for some reason the recipe calls for the white,
too. Basically, the idea is that the warmed, but not fully-cooked, egg
yolk is used to emulsify the salad dressing, just as you might warm egg
yolks while beating them for something like hollandaise sauce.

HTH,

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98