Scrambled Eggs
Beat five eggs till slightly blended, add a dust of white pepper, half a teaspoon of salt and half a cup of milk. Melt two tablespoons of butter in the chafing-dish, pour in the egg mixture and cook till it is creamy, scraping it from the bottom of the pan as it becomes thick. Scrambled eggs are nice accompanied by saltine wafers. A delicious variation is to butter slices of bread, spread thinly with anchovy paste and then cover with scrambled egg. A cheese flavor may be added by mixing just before serving with a quarter of a cup of grated cheese and a generous dust of paprika.
A straightforward chafing-dish scramble that depends entirely on gentle heat. Everything else here is a variation on the same base.
- The hinge: low heat, constant scraping"Cook till it is creamy" is the whole instruction. Keep the pan over low heat and pull the setting curds off the bottom with a flat spatula every few seconds; take the eggs off while they still look slightly underdone, since residual heat finishes them.
- The chafing-dishThe original assumes a table-top chafing dish over a spirit lamp, a gentle heat source, and many such dishes had a hot-water pan that let the cook work indirectly. A heavy nonstick or well-seasoned skillet on low, or a bowl over simmering water for a very soft curd, gives much the same effect.
- Milk proportionHalf a cup of milk to five eggs is generous by current practice and will produce a loose, custardy scramble that weeps if overcooked. Two to three tablespoons is closer to the modern norm if you want a firmer result.
- White pepperUsed here so no dark specks show in the pale eggs. Black pepper will look different and tastes noticeably sharper and more aromatic, so the substitution is not purely cosmetic.
- Salt timingHalf a teaspoon for five eggs is a reasonable amount. Some modern cooks find that salting the raw beaten eggs fifteen minutes or so ahead gives a more tender curd; salting in the pan works too.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold in tubes, and still assertively salty. Spread it thinly as directed and cut back the salt in the eggs if you are making the toast version.
- Cheese added off the heatStir the grated cheese in at the very end, as written. Added early it seizes and squeezes water out of the eggs.
- YieldFive eggs serves two generously, or three with toast or saltines alongside.
Scrambled eggs appear in the eggs chapter of turn-of-the-century American household books both as a breakfast dish and as a chafing-dish one. The chafing dish, a metal pan over a spirit lamp, was fashionable equipment for late suppers and informal entertaining in the 1890s and 1900s, when a hostess without servants at hand could cook at the table; whole cookbooks were devoted to it. That context may explain the additions here: anchovy paste on buttered bread, a dust of paprika over cheese, and saltine wafers alongside.