Egg Butter
Boil a pint of molasses slowly about fifteen or twenty minutes, stirring to prevent burning, add three eggs well beaten, stirring them in as fast as possible, boil a few minutes longer, partially cool, and flavor to taste with lemon. -Mrs. Colbert, Broadway.
A molasses-and-egg spread that behaves like a cooked custard rather than a preserve. The whole thing hangs on how fast you get the beaten eggs into the hot molasses.
- The hinge: add the eggs fastBoiling molasses runs hotter than boiling water, and eggs dribbled in will set into threads. Have them beaten and ready, pour in a thin steady stream while whisking hard, and keep the pan moving. Tempering -- whisking a ladle of hot molasses into the eggs first, then returning the mixture to the pan -- is one way to manage it.
- A pint of molassesTwo cups. Use unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and thin on sugar; sorghum syrup may be closer to what a Midwestern kitchen of the period would have had on the shelf.
- "Boil slowly"Low heat and constant stirring. Molasses scorches on the bottom before the surface shows any sign of it, and burnt molasses cannot be rescued. A heavy-bottomed pan is worth more here than attention to the clock.
- Fifteen to twenty minutesThat is a reduction step, thickening the syrup before the eggs go in. Expect the volume to drop noticeably and the syrup to coat a spoon.
- Flavor with lemonProbably lemon extract, a few drops, though the recipe says only "lemon"; stir it in once the mixture has cooled somewhat so the aroma is not driven off. Fresh zest and a little juice work as well and cut the sweetness.
- Yield and keepingRoughly a cup and a half to two cups. This contains egg and is not shelf-stable: keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within a week.
- ServingSpread on hot biscuits, cornbread or toast. It sets to the consistency of thick apple butter as it cools and stiffens further when chilled.
Egg butter belongs to the family of "butters" that contain no butter at all -- apple butter, pumpkin butter -- named for their spreading consistency rather than their contents. It is a sweetener-and-egg spread of the sort that appears wherever molasses or sorghum was cheaper than fruit and sugar, and it is still remembered in Appalachian and Ozark kitchens, often associated with Easter and with using up eggs when hens came back into lay in spring. What mattered was that a jar of something sweet stood ready for the breakfast biscuit. The attribution to Mrs. Colbert of Broadway is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions by Ohio housewives and credits them by name and town.