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Salad, Stuffed Eggs For
Remove the skin and bone from three anchovies, pound the flesh in a mortar, and press it through a sieve. If the anchovies are objected to, substitute for them two ounces of potted ham and two ounces of veal and fat bacon. Boil six eggs for a quarter of an hour; put them into cold water, then strip off the shell and cut them into halves lengthwise. Take out the hard yolks, and put them in a mortar with a third of their bulk in fresh butter, the pounded anchovies, a pinch of powdered mace, and a pinch of cayenne. Pound all to a smooth paste, press the mixture into the eggs in the place where the yolks were, put the halves of the eggs together to make them look whole again, lay them on a dish, and surround them with lettuce-hearts. Send salad cream to table separately.
A Victorian cold-table dish that survives largely intact as the modern devilled egg, with two changes worth making: a shorter boil and a firmer filling.
- Boil the eggs far lessA quarter of an hour gives grey-green, sulphurous yolks and rubbery whites. Ten minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives fully set yolks that still mash smooth and whites firm enough to hold a filling.
- The anchoviesThree salt-packed anchovies boned and pounded equals about six tinned fillets in oil, blotted dry. Modern tinned fillets need no sieving; mash them with a fork or blitz them with the yolks.
- The meat substitute"Two ounces of potted ham and two ounces of veal and fat bacon" assumes cooked, well-seasoned meats already on hand. Read it as 2 oz potted or deviled ham plus 2 oz cooked veal or pork minced with a little bacon fat. Potted ham in the British sense is a spiced, sealed paste, not sliced deli ham.
- Butter proportion"A third of their bulk in fresh butter" for six yolks works out to roughly 1 to 1.5 oz, or 2 to 3 tablespoons. Have it soft but not melted, or the filling will not hold its shape when the halves are pressed together.
- Mace and cayenneGround mace is the outer covering of nutmeg and is milder and more floral; nutmeg is not a straight swap but is the closest thing most kitchens have. A pinch of cayenne here means a pinch, the heat is meant to be felt only in the finish.
- Making them "look whole again"Overfill each half slightly, press the two together, and chill for half an hour so the butter sets and holds the join. Standing them upright on a bed of leaves hides the seam.
- Lettuce-hearts and salad creamLettuce-hearts are the pale inner cores of cos or butterhead lettuce, quartered. Salad cream is a sweetened, mustard-sharp emulsion, tangier and thinner than mayonnaise; bottled salad cream or a mayonnaise loosened with vinegar and a little sugar and mustard both stand in.
- YieldSix eggs, reassembled whole rather than served as open halves; enough as a first course or cold-table dish for four to six.
Stuffed eggs run back much further than this book, appearing in medieval and Renaissance European cookery, but the Victorian version has a particular character: the yolks are enriched with butter and driven with something salty and pungent, most often anchovy. The alternative filling of potted ham with veal and bacon points to a household that kept potted meats under a butter seal in the larder, and to a cook able to build a dish from whatever savoury paste was to hand. Its placement among salads is telling: a stuffed egg was not a canape but a cold-table component, set out with lettuce-hearts and a jug of salad cream as part of a supper or luncheon spread. The dressing is sent to table separately, rather than tossed through, so the dish holds its appearance on the sideboard.