Eggs: Place
Pour the sauce into a broad, shallow dish and break the eggs carefully over it. Place in a hot oven until they are set.
Eggs on Rice.
Butter a baking dish, fill it half full with well-seasoned boiled rice; make as many depressions in the rice as there are people to be served; break an egg into each one, sprinkle with salt and strew with bits of butter. Bake until the eggs are set. Eggs and Mushrooms. ½ cupful milk, 1 pound mushrooms, i 1 MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK 1 tablespoonful butter, 6 poached eggs, Dash Sauce.
McIlhenny's Tabasco Peel and wash the mushrooms; place them in a saucepan and cook gently, with the butter, milk, a pinch of salt and tabasco. Cook ten minutes, thicken with flour, let come to a boil, then pour on a hot platter. Have your poached eggs ready; serve on top of the sauce, the mushrooms being in the middle.
Cheesed Eggs.
Place in a serving dish a tablespoonful butter and several slices rich cheese. When it is melted, break whole eggs into it; put the disn into the oven or before the fire. When the white sets, sprinkle grated cheese and pepper on them. Brown on top, and serve.
Eggs à la Bonne Femme (French recipe).
Cut an onion in dice; fry with a tablespoonful butter; add a tablespoonful vinegar; then butter a dish lightly, spread the onions over it, break in the eggs, and put the dish in the oven. When the eggs are done, strew over them fried bread crumbs, and serve hot.
Eggs in Nests.
Separate as many eggs as are needed for this dish and beat the whites to a stiff froth. Drop irregularly on a flat buttered baking dish, dust with pepper and salt here and there, in the middle of the white, slide in carefully the raw yolks. Put a tiny bit of butter on each yolk.
Place the dish in a hot oven for eight minutes. Serve immediately. If desired, the froth may be piled into individual dishes with the yolk in the center of each and baked as described.
Boiled Eggs.
If the eggs have been set in a refrigerator, drop them in warm water for a few minutes before boiling, as the sudden change of temperature is liable to crack the shells. Put them into a saucepan where the water is boiling, and if you wish them soft, cook gently for three and a half minutes.
Poached Eggs with Greens.
For this dish use outer leaves of lettuce; wash them thoroughly and boil until tender in salted water.
Drain, chop fine, and season with salt, pepper, and butter. Toast a few slices of bread, butter them, cover with the chopped greens, and on top of each drop a poached egg.
Fried Eggs.
Fry thin slices of bacon to a crisp, lift them out and lay on a hot platter. Break into the pan as many eggs as you need; let them cook until the white is set, and baste with hot fat till a film forms over the yolk.
If you like them turned, run a knife under each and reverse quickly. Cut off the ragged edges and serve on a platter with the crisp bacon.
Fried Eggs with Brown Sauce.
This is a run of short baked and fried egg dishes printed one after another, sharing a single assumption: a hot oven and eggs cooked only until the whites just set. The controlling variable throughout is heat, not time.
- "A hot oven"In period usage this points to somewhere around 400-450F, though the book states no temperature. At that heat baked eggs set fast, so check at five or six minutes rather than trusting a stated time; whites firm from the edges inward and the yolks go from runny to chalky quickly.
- Broad, shallow dishThe shape is the point. A wide gratin dish or a shallow enamelled pan puts the eggs in a single layer over the sauce so they set evenly. In a deep casserole the bottom scorches while the tops stay raw.
- Eggs and Mushrooms proportionsOne pound of mushrooms to half a cup of milk and a single tablespoon of butter is a heavy load of vegetable to very little liquid, and mushrooms give up a good deal of their own water. "Thicken with flour" is left unmeasured; a scant tablespoon, worked into the butter before the milk goes in, will hold that quantity.
- TabascoMcIlhenny's Tabasco is the same product sold today and the "dash" needs no adjustment. The brand name appearing in the ingredient list rather than as generic pepper sauce is itself a period marker.
- "Rich cheese" for Cheesed EggsA full-fat firm cheese that melts smoothly - a good Cheddar or Gruyère. Melt it gently and do not let it come to a hard boil before the eggs go in, or the fat separates and the eggs sit in grease.
- Before the fireThe alternative to the oven is direct radiant heat from an open fire or a range grate. A modern broiler works, set several inches down, but it browns the cheese long before the whites set, so start in the oven and finish under the broiler.
- Boiled Eggs, three and a half minutesThat timing gives a barely-set white, and eggs of the period were likely on average smaller than a modern large egg. A modern large egg lowered into already-boiling water wants about four and a half to five minutes for a soft yolk with a fully set white. The advice to temper cold eggs in warm water first still holds.
- Poached Eggs with GreensOuter lettuce leaves are bitter and tough, which is why they are boiled rather than dressed. Romaine or the coarse outer leaves of a head lettuce work; a couple of minutes in salted water is enough, and squeeze them dry before chopping or the toast collapses.
These pages sit in the long tradition of oeufs sur le plat - eggs broken into a buttered shallow dish over some prepared foundation and set in the oven, a method that lets one egg feed a person alongside rice, greens, onions or cheese. Eggs à la Bonne Femme is the plainest sort of French home cooking, the name meaning roughly "the good wife's" and often used for simple dishes built on onions and a little vinegar or wine rather than a made sauce. What dates the collection is the frugality and the branding together: outer lettuce leaves, normally discarded, are boiled and served on toast, while Tabasco is named outright, a sign of how thoroughly the Louisiana pepper sauce had entered ordinary American cooking by the early twentieth century. Eggs in Nests, with the whites whipped stiff and the raw yolks slid into hollows, is a showy sort of breakfast dish that turns up under various names in cookbooks of the period.