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Eggs Au Gratin
6 hard cooked eggs 1/2 pint (1/2 cup) milk 2 tablespoonfuls grated 3 tablespoonfuls cream cheese Salt, red pepper, and white I heaping tablespoonful (I pepper to taste oz.) flour 2 raw egg yolks I heaping tablespoonful (I Toast points oz.) butter Divide the eggs into halves lengthways and place them in a buttered gratin dish. Melt the butter, stir in the flour, add the milk, stir till boiling, then add one tablespoonful of the cheese and the seasonings. Cook for five minutes, remove from the fire, add the yolks of eggs, mix well, and pour over the hard cooked eggs. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and brown in the oven.
Garnish with the toast points and serve hot. ¼ lb. bacon
A simple cheese sauce poured over halved hard-boiled eggs and browned. The ingredient column has been set in two columns that read across, so quantities need untangling before you start.
- The milk quantityThe original gives "1/2 pint (1/2 cup) milk," which does not add up: an imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz and a US half-pint 8 fl oz, so neither equals half a cup. One of the two figures is a printer's or converter's error and which was intended is not recoverable. With 1 oz each of butter and flour, the larger figure gives a sauce that pours and coats; half a cup gives something closer to a paste.
- The cheeseOne plausible reading of the garbled column is 2 tablespoonfuls grated cheese plus 3 tablespoonfuls cream cheese, the grated cheese going into the sauce and over the top (the method calls for one spoonful in the sauce and "the rest" sprinkled over). Any firm, dry grating cheese works; modern block cream cheese is stiff, so soften it before stirring in.
- Heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.)The recipe itself equates a heaping tablespoonful with an ounce by weight. Use 28 g butter and 28 g flour rather than measuring by spoon.
- Oven for browningNo temperature is given. "Brown in the oven" implies a hot oven; around 425-450F for a few minutes, or a broiler for one to two minutes, will do it. The contents are already cooked and you are only colouring the top; longer heat makes the yolks chalky and the sauce grainy.
- The raw yolksAdd them off the heat, as directed, and stir briskly. If the sauce is still near boiling the yolks will scramble in threads. The brief pass under high heat afterwards is what sets them.
- Red and white pepperRed pepper means cayenne, used in pinches; white pepper is ground white peppercorn, chosen partly so no dark specks show in a pale sauce. Black pepper both looks and tastes different -- white pepper, being fermented and hulled, has its own earthier flavour.
- Gratin dishA shallow ovenproof dish that lets the sauce come just to the tops of the egg halves. In a deep casserole the topping will not brown before the eggs overheat.
- Toast pointsTriangles of buttered toast, crusts off, tucked round the edge at the moment of serving so they do not soften.
- YieldSix eggs serves three as a light lunch or supper dish, or four as a first course.
Eggs au gratin belongs to the large family of Victorian and Edwardian egg dishes built on the same principle: cook the eggs hard, cloak them in a flour-and-butter white sauce, and brown the top. Au gratin refers to the crust, not to cheese as such, though cheese became its usual means.