Slice some hard-boiled eggs and place in a well-buttered baking-dish. Cover with well-beaten raw eggs; sprinkle with salt, pepper, cayenne and curry-powder, a few bits of butter rolled in bread-crumbs and some grated cheese. Let bake in a moderate oven until done.
June 6 — No. 6
Indian
A short baked egg dish from a day-a-dish book, written with the terseness typical of the genre: no quantities, no times, no yield. The proportions are left to the cook, so treat the list as a method rather than a formula.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. At that heat a shallow dish should set in roughly 20-25 minutes; "until done" means the custard is just firm at the centre and no longer wobbles as a liquid.
- Working quantitiesFor a 1-quart baking dish, six hard-boiled eggs sliced, four raw eggs beaten with about half a cup of milk or cream, and a couple of ounces of grated cheese give a dish that serves four. The original gives no ratio at all.
- The hinge: do not overbakeBeaten raw egg poured over solids is a custard, and it curdles and weeps if pushed past about 170F at the centre. Pull the dish while the middle is barely set; residual heat finishes it. A water bath is worth the trouble if your oven runs hot.
- Loosen the raw eggEggs beaten alone bake dense and rubbery over the sliced whites. Milk or cream at roughly a quarter cup per two eggs gives the soft set the dish is aiming for.
- Curry powder of the periodCommercial curry powder of this era was generally milder and more turmeric-forward than modern blends. Start with a teaspoon for the quantities above and remember the cayenne is separate and additional.
- Butter rolled in crumbsThe instruction means small bits of butter tossed in dry breadcrumbs so they sit on the surface and brown rather than sinking. Scatter them with the cheese over the top, not stirred through.
- Slicing the boiled eggsCut them thick, about a quarter inch, and lay them in a single overlapping layer. Thin slices break up in the custard and the dish loses the contrast of set white against soft egg that is its whole point.
- ServingMost likely a supper or luncheon dish, though the book does not say. Toast points or plain rice absorb the curried custard well.
Dishes labelled "Hindu" or "Indian" in Anglo-American cookbooks of this era rarely came from India; they were domestic recipes marked out by the presence of curry powder, which by the late nineteenth century was a shelf staple in Britain and the United States and functioned as a seasoning shorthand for the whole subcontinent. A day-a-dish book like this one moved through a nominal world tour, needing a distinct nation for each date, and curry powder plus cayenne was enough to earn an eggs-and-cheese gratin its passport. The underlying technique — hard-boiled eggs bound in a savoury custard under crumbs and cheese — is squarely European, a close relative of the eggs au gratin found throughout the same books, and the dish belongs to the frugal tradition of turning eggs and a little cheese into a hot main course.