Savory Eggs
Crisco 6 eggs 4 tablespoonfuls chopped cooked chicken, ham or tongue Salt and pepper to taste 2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley 6 rounds fried toast Crisco six small molds. Mix ham, parsley, and seasonings together, throw a little into each mold, shake it well round sides; break into each mold one egg, taking care not to break yolk, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dot with Crisco. Steam four or five minutes, or until set. Turn out on rounds of fried toast and serve at once.
A shirred-egg dish from a Crisco promotional cookbook, cooked in individual molds over steam rather than in the oven. The method is sound; only the vessels and the fat need translating.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and the book exists to sell it. Butter works better here for flavor and browns the toast properly; any neutral oil will grease the molds.
- The moldsSix small molds means dariole molds or timbale cups of roughly 1/3 cup capacity. Straight-sided ramekins or a muffin tin work, though a tapered mold unmolds more cleanly. Grease them thoroughly and cold, right to the rim, or the egg will tear on turning out.
- Steaming setupSet the filled molds on a rack in a wide pan with an inch of simmering water, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer. A hard boil rattles the molds and makes the whites rubbery and pocked.
- Four or five minutes is optimisticFour or five minutes may be short -- Depending on mold size and how vigorously the pan steams, a white that is fully set with a soft yolk may take rather longer than the stated four or five minutes; the recipe's own 'or until set' is the better guide. Judge by the white: it should be opaque and no longer wobbly at the center. Undercooked whites will collapse when turned out.
- TongueCooked beef or ox tongue was an ordinary cold meat in the period and is now a specialty butcher item. Chopped ham, leftover roast chicken, or prosciutto all do the same job of lining the mold with something savory.
- Fried toastRounds of bread fried in fat until crisp, not toaster toast. Cut with a cutter slightly wider than the mold so the egg sits on the round rather than overhanging, and fry them just before serving so they stay crisp under the egg.
- Turning outRun a thin knife around the rim, invert onto the toast, and lift the mold straight up. Let the molds stand thirty seconds off the heat first; the egg firms slightly and releases more readily.
- YieldSix eggs, six molds, six rounds of toast: one apiece for six at breakfast or a light supper, two apiece for three. The dish does not hold, so time it to the table.
This comes from a Crisco recipe book of the 1910s, published after Procter & Gamble introduced the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening in 1911 and set about persuading cooks that it could replace butter and lard in everything from pastry to greasing an egg mold. The dish itself is older than the fat: eggs baked or steamed in small buttered molds, turned out on fried bread and dressed with a scrap of chopped meat, belong to the French repertoire of oeufs moulés and appear in nineteenth-century English and American cookery books. The chopped chicken, ham or tongue is a leftovers instruction, which is part of why such recipes recur so often in period household books; the parsley and the round of fried toast are what raise a spoonful of cold meat to something worth naming on a menu.