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Scrambled Eggs
Beat four eggs very light. Add a teacup milk, thickened with a teaspoonful flour. Have the pan very hot, put in a tablespoonful butter, pour in the eggs, and scramble quickly.--Mrs. E.
Scrambled Eggs.
Wash the pan with hot water and soap. Wipe dry. Grease with a little lard. Break into this the eggs, adding a lump of butter and a little salt. Stir till done.--Mrs. P
Two contributed versions of the same dish sit side by side here: one enriched with a thin milk-and-flour binder, the other plain. Both assume a very hot pan, which is the point worth arguing with.
- Heat is the hingeMrs. E. wants the pan "very hot" and the eggs scrambled quickly, which on a wood range with a thick iron pan gave a large, soft curd before the metal overheated. On a modern burner with a thin pan, medium-low heat and constant stirring give the same result without the rubbery, weeping texture.
- A teacupA teacup in nineteenth-century American receipts is generally taken as about three-quarters of a cup, though it was never standardised and some books treat it as a half cup. Start with a half cup of milk for four eggs and judge by consistency; more than that makes a loose custard rather than scrambled eggs.
- The flourThe teaspoon of flour is a binder to keep the milk from separating out as the eggs set. Whisk it into the cold milk first to a smooth slurry, then beat that into the eggs, or it will leave lumps.
- Lard for greasingLard is one of several fats that would have been on hand; butter, neutral oil or the same lard all work. Her instruction to wash the pan with soap and wipe it dry may reflect a kitchen where the same skillet had lately been used for something else, such as bacon or fish.
- SaltOnly the second version salts the eggs. Salt them in the bowl before cooking or at the end; salt added partway through is commonly said to draw water out of the setting curd.
- Doneness"Stir till done" should mean pulled from the heat while the eggs still look slightly underset, since residual heat in the pan carries them further. Fully firm in the pan means dry on the plate.
- YieldFour eggs with milk serve two generously, or three as part of a larger breakfast. Mrs. P. gives no egg count; two to three eggs per person is the usual reckoning.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, drew on contributions credited on its title page to some two hundred and fifty Virginia housewives, and the initials that close each entry -- Mrs. E., Mrs. P. -- are how those contributors are credited. That method helps explain why the same dish appears twice on one page with no attempt to reconcile the versions. The two treatments do differ in approach: one stretches the eggs with milk and a little flour, the other holds that eggs want nothing but butter and salt. Both would have been cooked over a wood or coal range, without any dial to set, which is why the only temperature instruction Mrs. E. can give is "very hot."