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Scrambled Eggs
Put one tablespoon of butter in a saucepan with four tablespoons of milk, and let it heat; break six eggs into a bowl, salt and pepper to taste, beat slightly with a fork. Pour the eggs into the milk, and cook slowly, lifting from the bottom with a tablespoon.
— Mrs. Stanley Vincent
A plain, sound method that differs from most modern instructions in one respect: the milk goes into the pan first and is heated before the eggs join it.
- The hinge: low heat"Cook slowly" is the whole recipe. Six eggs over medium-low heat, lifted and folded continuously, take five to eight minutes; the same eggs over high heat weep liquid and turn granular in two.
- Heat the milk, don't scald itButter and milk together want only to be warm and the butter melted. If the milk simmers before the eggs go in it can catch on the pan bottom and taste scorched.
- Beat slightlyA few strokes with a fork leave streaks of white and yolk rather than a uniform mixture. Cooks who prefer soft, loose curds generally beat this lightly; beating to an even yellow tends to give a denser, more custard-like set.
- Pan choiceA saucepan is what the original specifies and it works, but a nonstick or well-seasoned skillet with sloping sides makes lifting from the bottom easier. Enamelled cast iron holds heat too well and will carry on cooking off the burner.
- When to stopPull the pan while the eggs still look slightly underdone and glossy. Residual heat finishes them on the way to the plate.
- YieldSix eggs serves three as a main breakfast dish, four alongside toast, bacon or potatoes.
- Salt timingThe salt goes into the raw eggs here rather than the pan, which is fine. Some modern cooks hold that salting eggs and letting them stand briefly before cooking gives a slightly more tender set, though this recipe pours them in at once.
Scrambled eggs appear very widely in American community cookbooks, and the variations tend to lie in the liquid: milk, cream, water, or nothing at all. Adding milk stretches the eggs and cools the pan, which would have given a cook working over wood or coal some margin before the eggs overset. Lifting from the bottom with a spoon rather than stirring produces the large soft curds still widely preferred in Britain and America. Community books of this kind collected receipts under a contributor's name, and the roster of local names was part of the appeal of buying one.