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Eggs, Jumbled
Break four eggs into a stewpan with two ounces of butter and a seasoning of salt and pepper; let them set over a clear fire, and stir till the mixture becomes rather solid; then remove, and serve with or without a ragout of vegetables, celery, lettuce, spinach, sorrel, or asparagus tops. Or it may be sent to table upon slices of hot buttered toast. Time, five minutes. Probable cost, without vegetables, 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
This is scrambled eggs under an older name, and the proportions are generous by modern habit: 2 oz butter to four eggs. The only real skill is heat control.
- "Jumbled" means scrambledThe dish is stirred rather than poached or fried, and "buttered eggs" is the better-attested older English name for the same thing. There is no thickener, no cream and no milk — just eggs, butter and seasoning.
- Butter quantityTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons (about 55 g) for four eggs, which is a lot by current standards and gives a very rich, loose result. Half that still works.
- "A clear fire"A coal fire burning bright and smokeless rather than newly made or smoky. What matters for eggs is steady, controllable heat: on a modern hob use low heat and lift the pan off periodically.
- The hinge: stop early"Rather solid" is the point to remove, and the eggs will keep cooking in their own heat and in the butter after the pan leaves the fire. Take them off while they still look slightly underdone or they will be dry and grainy by the time they reach the plate.
- StewpanA stewpan here is a straight-sided saucepan, not a casserole dish. Any small heavy-based pan or nonstick skillet does the same job; a wooden spoon or spatula suits the constant stirring better than a whisk.
- Five minutesRealistic over gentle heat. If the eggs are set in under two minutes the pan is too hot, and curds will form coarse and weep liquid.
- The vegetable accompanimentsCelery, lettuce, spinach, sorrel and asparagus tops would each be softened in butter to make the ragout the recipe suggests. Sorrel is worth seeking out for the sharpness it gives against the butter; it collapses in a minute or two in a pan.
- Yield and costThree to four servings is optimistic as a modern main — four eggs feeds two comfortably with toast. The 6d costing reflects late-Victorian egg prices and has no useful modern equivalent.
"Jumbled" and "buttered" eggs are older English names for the dish now generally called scrambled, and recipes under the "buttered eggs" heading appear in English cookery books well before the nineteenth century. The list of possible accompaniments is a good index of the Victorian kitchen garden: sorrel, then a familiar salad and sauce herb in Britain, has largely dropped out of the shops since.