were dressing poached eggs with the sauce
that would come to be called crème anglaise.
Savory yolk-based sauces and egg-white
foams developed over the next three centuries.
By around 1900, Escoffier had a repertoire of
more than 300 egg dishes, and in his
Gastronomie Pratique, Ali Bab gave a playful
recipe for a “Symphony of Eggs” — a four-
egg omelet containing two chopped hard-
cooked and six whole poached eggs.
The Industrial Egg
Hen Fever The chicken underwent more
evolutionary change between 1850 and 1900
than it had in its entire lifetime as a species,
and under an unusual selection pressure: the
fascination of Europeans and Americans with
the exotic East. A political opening between
England and China brought specimens of
previously unknown Chinese breeds, the large,
showy Cochins, to the West. These