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Plovers' Eggs
Plovers' eggs are esteemed a great delicacy. They are usually boiled hard, and sent to table either hot or cold. If hot they should be placed on a napkin; if cold in a moss-lined basket. They are frequently shelled, and served with good white sauce or brown gravy poured over them; or used as a garnish for salads. Half a dozen plovers' eggs neatly arranged in a moss basket form a very pretty addition to the break-fast-table. One of the little baskets in which fruit is sold by the greengrocers may be utilised for the purpose. It should have a twist of wire fastened into it for a handle, then be brushed over with gum, and both handle and basket entirely covered with green. If no other moss is at hand, packets may be bought at the green-grocer's for a trifling sum. Time to boil the eggs, ten minutes. Probable cost, uncertain. Sufficient--allow one or two for each person. (See also EGGS, PLOVERS'.)
The method here is nothing more than hard-boiling and presentation, but the central ingredient cannot legally or ethically be obtained today. These notes explain what the entry assumes and why it is now a historical curiosity rather than a breakfast plan.
- The bird is protected"Plovers' eggs" in Victorian and Edwardian Britain meant chiefly the eggs of the northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), with golden plover eggs also taken. The lapwing is a red-listed species of high conservation concern, and taking its eggs is prohibited under wild bird protection law in the UK and under equivalent statutes across Europe. There is no lawful supply.
- Why the trade collapsedCommercial egging was a significant pressure on ground-nesting waders, which lay only three or four eggs a clutch and re-lay at a cost. Legal protection in Britain closed the trade in lapwing eggs in the mid-twentieth century, and lapwing numbers have continued to fall since, largely through changes in grassland farming.
- What was often sold insteadEven in the period, much of what reached London poulterers as "plovers' eggs" was in fact the eggs of black-headed gulls and other species, sold on the strength of a similar speckled olive shell. Cassell's frank "probable cost, uncertain" reflects a supply that was seasonal, brief and adulterated.
- Ten minutes is a hard-boilPlovers' eggs run well under half the weight of a hen's egg, so ten minutes is a deliberate, thorough hard-boiling rather than a soft set. The point was a firm egg that could be handled cold, shelled, sauced or set in a basket without collapsing.
- The moss basketThe staging described uses a greengrocer's punnet, a wire handle, gum as adhesive and moss. It is a table-decoration convention of the Victorian breakfast room, not a cooking step, and tells you the dish was valued as much for display as for flavour.
- If you want the dishConsult a current recipe using a legally farmed egg. We are not offering a substitution or a revised method for this entry.
Plovers' eggs occupied an odd rank in the late Victorian larder: cheap to gather, impossible to farm, and therefore expensive and fashionable. The season was short — lapwings lay from late March — and the first baskets to reach London fetched notice in the newspapers much as the first grouse or the first asparagus did, which is why Cassell's cannot quote a price and simply records the cost as uncertain. Their appeal was largely visual, the small olive-brown shells blotched with black looking well against white napkins and green moss, and the flesh itself being little more than a small, rich hen's egg. Lapwings were also valued alive by farmers as eaters of insects, and complaints about egg-collectors stripping fields appear in agricultural writing through the nineteenth century; protective legislation followed in the twentieth, and entries like this one survive as evidence of a delicacy the law deliberately abolished.