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EGGS, BUTTERED (another way)
Put three ounces of butter into a basin, place it in boiling water, and stir till melted; add eight eggs, well beaten, and pour both together into a well-lined saucepan. When the eggs and butter have been held long enough over a gentle fire to warm, turn them back into the basin and again into the saucepan; do this two or three times, that they may get thoroughly blended. Keep the mixture stirred one way till hot, but do not let it boil, or it will curdle. Cut slices of bread, toast, and butter them while hot. Serve with the buttered eggs on the top. Time, about five minutes to make the eggs hot. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for four persons.
This is soft scrambled eggs made by the gentle French method, with an unusually high proportion of butter. The whole technique rests on keeping the mixture below the point where the egg proteins tighten and weep.
- The hinge: heat controlCurdling begins around 180F, so the pan should never be hot enough to set the eggs quickly. Work over the lowest flame or, easier still, keep the basin in the pan of simmering water the whole time and treat it as a double boiler.
- "Well-lined saucepan"In a Victorian kitchen this most likely means a copper pan with a sound tin lining, which would not react with the eggs. A heavy nonstick or stainless pan does the same job today.
- Pouring back and forthTurning the mixture between basin and pan is a way of dropping the temperature and redistributing the heat before any part of it can set. It works, but a wide pan and constant stirring achieve the same result with less washing up.
- "Stirred one way"The direction is folklore rather than chemistry. What matters is that the stirring is continuous and the curds stay small.
- Butter quantityThree ounces is six tablespoons for eight eggs, which is roughly double what most modern recipes use. It gives a very loose, almost sauce-like result; two ounces makes something closer to what most people expect from scrambled eggs.
- TimingFive minutes assumes a gentle fire already established. Over a bain-marie expect eight to twelve minutes, and take the pan off while the mixture is still slightly looser than you want, since it carries on setting.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives none. Salt at the end rather than the start, and season the toast as well as the eggs.
- Cost and yieldSixteen pence in late-Victorian money; the note that it serves four is a useful reminder that two eggs per person was a generous breakfast portion.
"Buttered eggs" is an older English name for what we call scrambled eggs, and it persisted in cookery books into the twentieth century; the term is also used in Ireland, though there it can refer to the separate practice of rubbing warm butter into the shells of fresh eggs to preserve them. The heading "another way" indicates that at least one other version of the dish appears elsewhere in the book, which was a compiled reference work rather than a single authored collection, with alternative methods printed side by side for the cook to choose between. The back-and-forth pouring between basin and saucepan reflects a kitchen without any means of setting a precise low heat -- with an open range, one practical way to keep eggs below curdling point was to lift them off the heat repeatedly. The generous butter is in keeping with the period's liberal use of dairy in egg cookery.