Artichoke Bottoms Stuffed with Oeufs Mollets

I collect cookbooks in all languages. (As for how I'm going to read them, I worry about that afterward!) Some years ago, I bought a midcentury French cookbook at a secondhand bookstore in Bordeaux. It was larded with clippings, recipes from old newspapers. One, dated 1948, was this recipe for artichoke bottoms stuffed with eggs, cooked so that the yolks are runny and the whites completely surrounding them are firm, topped with a flowing mayonnaise scented with tarragon and dotted with caper