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Asparagus in Ambush
1 quart of asparagus tops 9 stale breakfast rolls 1 pint of milk 4 eggs I large tablespoonful of butter Salt and black pepper to taste Wash the asparagus tops, boil fifteen minutes, and drain them in a colander. Cut the tops off the rolls, and take out the crumb, then set them open in the oven to dry, laying each top by the roll from which it was taken. Put the milk on to boil in a farina boiler. Beat the eggs until light, then stir them in the boiling milk, and stir until it begins to thicken; add the butter, salt and pepper, and take from the fire. Chop the asparagus tops, then add them to the milk.
Take the rolls from the oven, fill them with this mixture, put on the tops, and serve hot. These are delicious.
A hollowed-roll dish from the era of hot-weather cookery, when cooks wanted something warm but light. The whole thing hinges on the custard: it is a stirred sauce, not scrambled eggs, and it will curdle if you hurry it.
- The farina boilerThis is a double boiler — an inner pan set over simmering water. Use one. Beaten eggs poured into milk over direct heat will scramble into curds in seconds, and the filling should be a thick pouring custard that just coats the spoon.
- Boil the asparagus fifteen minutes, noFifteen minutes is what the recipe calls for. Modern tips need three to five minutes in salted water, then a drain and a rough chop; longer and they turn grey and stringy.
- QuantitiesA quart of asparagus tops is by volume, roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of trimmed spears. A pint of milk is 2 cups. The "large tablespoonful of butter" is about 1 oz.
- Stale breakfast rollsSmall soft rolls, a day old so they hold their shape when hollowed. Nine rolls to a pint of custard suggests small ones; if yours are larger, use fewer.
- Drying the shells"Set them open in the oven" means drying rather than baking. The recipe gives no temperature; a low oven, in the region of 300F, until the interiors are dry and lightly crisp. This is what keeps the custard from soaking straight through the bread.
- Assemble at the last minuteFill and cap the rolls immediately before they go to the table. Filled and left standing, the shells soften and collapse.
- YieldNine filled rolls, so a first course or light lunch for four to six.
Dishes "in ambush" — a filling concealed inside a hollowed bread case, a pastry crust or a scooped vegetable — were a small genre in late nineteenth-century American and English cookery, the name often said to be a piece of Victorian table wit for food that surprises the eater. The technique resembles the older French *croustade*, a bread or pastry shell filled with a ragout or cream mixture, and it was practical as well as playful: it let a cook stretch an expensive spring vegetable across nine servings and turned yesterday's rolls into something presentable. Books of summer cookery aimed at dishes that needed no long roasting and could be built from a brief boil and a stirred custard, keeping the range cool and the meal light.