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Eggs and Asparagus
Cut a slice of bread to suit a dish, toast and butter it while quite hot, then lay it on the dish, and keep both warm by the side of the fire. Have ready six well-beaten eggs, add a little salt and pepper, and put them into a saucepan over the fire with a lump of butter. Beat the eggs until they have lost their fluid state, then spread them over the toast with asparagus, boiled and cut small, laid on the top of the eggs. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two or more persons.
Scrambled eggs on buttered toast with asparagus, written for a coal range where the pan sits beside the fire rather than over it. The only real skill is stopping the eggs early.
- The hinge: pull the eggs while loose"Beat the eggs until they have lost their fluid state" is the point at which they should leave the heat, not the point at which they are done. They carry on setting on the hot toast and in the pan's residual heat, so take them off while they still look slightly underdone and glossy.
- Low heat, and keep movingSix eggs with a generous lump of butter want gentle heat and constant stirring — a Victorian range gave you a cool spot at the side of the fire, which a modern burner does not. Use the lowest setting, or hold the pan just off the heat every few seconds.
- Butter quantity"A lump" is roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons for six eggs. It is doing real work here: it slows the coagulation and keeps the curds soft.
- Half an hourThe stated time covers making the toast, boiling the asparagus and keeping everything warm. The eggs themselves need three to five minutes at most.
- Boiling the asparagusNo time is given. Thin spears need two to three minutes in well-salted boiling water, thicker ones four to five; drain thoroughly, or the water will thin the eggs. Cut into short lengths after cooking, as directed.
- Keeping the toast warmSubstitute a very low oven for the side of the fire. Butter the toast while hot as instructed — the butter soaks into the bread rather than sitting on the surface.
- Cost and yield1s. 6d. is a period retail figure and means nothing now. "Two or more persons" is accurate: six eggs makes a substantial supper for two, or a light dish for three.
Buttered toast as a base for a soft savoury mixture is one of the oldest English supper formats — the same logic that produces Welsh rarebit, anchovy toast and scrambled eggs with shrimp — and it survived into late Victorian cookery precisely because it needed nothing but a fire, a pan and bread going slightly stale. Asparagus marks the dish as seasonal and a little genteel: through the nineteenth century English asparagus was a market-garden crop with a short spring cutting season, expensive enough that recipes routinely used it as a garnish or an addition rather than the substance of a dish, which is exactly its role here, scattered over the top where it can be seen.