Home › The Principles of Cookery › EGGS AND ASPARAGUS (another way)
EGGS AND ASPARAGUS (another way)
Boil some nice young asparagus, and cut it into pieces as nearly as possible like peas. Have ready four eggs well beaten, and flavoured with pepper and salt. Put the asparagus with them and stir gently; then dissolve two ounces of butter in a stewpan, and stir the mixture until it is thick. Serve on toast. Time to boil asparagus, fifteen to eighteen minutes after the water boils; to stew with the eggs, two or three minutes. Sufficient for two persons.
A scrambled egg dish built around asparagus tips cut to the size of peas — essentially a Victorian version of what a French kitchen would call oeufs brouillés aux asperges. Two things need adjusting: the asparagus boiling time and the amount of butter.
- Asparagus timingFifteen to eighteen minutes will reduce modern asparagus to string. Thin spears need 2-3 minutes in boiling salted water, thick ones 4-5, until just tender at the base. Boiling times of this length were standard in Victorian cookery books, whatever the reason.
- Cut the tips smallThe instruction to cut the asparagus "as nearly as possible like peas" is the point of the dish — small pieces distribute through the egg instead of sitting in it. Use the tender upper two-thirds of the spear and discard the woody ends.
- Drain and dryBoiled asparagus carries a surprising amount of water. Drain well and blot the pieces before they go into the egg, or the finished scramble will weep on the toast.
- The butterTwo ounces (4 tablespoons, about 55g) of butter for four eggs is generous; half that is plenty.
- "Stir until it is thick"This is the hinge. Keep the heat low and stir constantly, and pull the pan off the burner while the egg is still glossy and slightly loose — residual heat finishes it. The two or three minutes given is realistic only over gentle heat.
- A "stewpan"A straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Any small heavy-bottomed saucepan or nonstick skillet works; the heavy base matters more than the shape.
- YieldTwo persons, as stated. Season the eggs before cooking as directed, and do not salt the finished scramble again until you have tasted it.
Asparagus was a market-garden luxury in nineteenth-century Britain, sold in tied bundles during a short spring season and priced accordingly, which is why cookery books of the period give so many ways to stretch a small quantity — in soups, on toast, and folded into eggs like this. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, first issued in the 1870s and reprinted in expanded form for decades, was aimed at middle-class households with a cook rather than a chef, and its frequent habit of giving "another way" after a principal recipe reflects that readership: the same handful of seasonal ingredients, rearranged. The dish itself belongs to the broad family of French egg cookery that English books absorbed through the Victorian period, where a scramble enriched with butter and a green vegetable served on toast filled the breakfast, luncheon and supper slots equally well.