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Eggs a la Livingstone
4 eggs 1/2 cup stewed and strained tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon paprika 2 tablespoons butter Pate de foie gras Finely chopped truffles Beat eggs slightly, and add tomatoes, salt, and paprika. Melt butter in an omelet pan, add seasoned eggs, and cook same as Scrambled Eggs. Spread slices of toasted bread with pate de foie gras. Pour over the eggs, and sprinkle with truffles.
A tomato-enriched scramble on foie gras toast, from the era when chafing-dish suppers and "eggs on toast, dressed up" filled the supper column. Nothing here is difficult; the whole dish stands or falls on how gently the eggs are cooked.
- Cook the eggs low and slowAdded tomato means extra water, and eggs plus water on high heat weep badly. Keep the pan over low heat, stir constantly, and pull them off while they still look slightly underdone -- they carry over in the pan.
- Stewed and strained tomatoesThis is tomato pulp cooked down and pushed through a sieve, closer to a thick passata than to canned diced tomatoes. Half a cup of thin tomato juice will make the eggs watery; reduce it first if it is not thick.
- The omelet panA period omelet pan is a small heavy skillet with sloping sides, iron or steel. Any 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan does the same job.
- PaprikaIn American books of this period paprika generally meant a mild, sweet sort used as much for colour as heat; hot smoked paprika would dominate the dish at a quarter teaspoon.
- Pate de foie grasThe original means a smooth potted goose or duck liver preparation, spread thin on the toast rather than served in slabs. A good chicken liver pate or a mousse-style duck liver spread stands in without changing the character of the dish; the point is a rich, cool layer under hot eggs.
- TrufflesFinely chopped black truffle is the garnish as written. A few drops of truffle oil or a pinch of preserved chopped truffle from a jar is the practical substitute; skipping it entirely leaves a perfectly good tomato scramble.
- YieldFour eggs serve two as a light supper or breakfast, one as a substantial plate; the recipe does not say how many slices of toast to prepare. Toast the bread just before serving so the pate does not soak in.
Fanny Farmer-era American cookbooks are full of egg dishes named for people, hotels and restaurants -- Eggs Benedict, Eggs a la Suisse, Eggs a la Goldenrod -- and the pattern is often the same: eggs cooked simply, then dressed with something expensive. Here the extravagance is doubled, foie gras beneath and truffles above, both imported luxuries that a well-off American household of the period could buy in small tins from a fancy grocer. The name may be a nod to a person or a restaurant rather than a place of origin, though the attribution is not documented.