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Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms
4 eggs I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 8 small mushrooms 1 tablespoonful cream 1 slice buttered toast Salt, pepper, and red pepper Wash and peel the mushrooms, chop them finely, and fry them in a little melted butter. Beat up the eggs, and pour them into a saucepan; add the cream, mushrooms, butter, and seasonings. Stir over a quick fire until the eggs are lightly set.
Have the toast neatly trimmed ready on a hot fireproof dish, put the egg mixture on the top of it, and serve immediately. 6 eggs
A plain English breakfast dish from a book built around flameproof earthenware. Two working notes before anything else: the "quick fire" is the one instruction worth ignoring, and the stray "6 eggs" at the end is a scaling note, not a step.
- Heat, not speedStirring eggs over a quick (high) fire sets the curd hard and squeezes out water. Use moderate-to-low heat and pull the pan off while the mixture still looks slightly loose; residual heat finishes it on the way to the table.
- Peeling mushroomsPeriod recipes commonly direct peeling, whatever the source of the mushrooms. Cultivated button or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe or a quick rinse; the skin carries flavour and peeling wastes a good deal of the cap.
- Butter measureA heaping tablespoonful is given as 1 oz., so about 2 level tablespoons or 30 g. Some goes into frying the mushrooms and the rest into the egg mixture.
- Red pepperCayenne, used as a pinch for warmth rather than heat. Not paprika, and not crushed chilli flakes.
- Drain the mushroomsChopped mushrooms shed liquid as they fry. Cook them until that moisture has gone and the pan is dry again, or the eggs will weep onto the toast.
- YieldFour eggs serves two on one large slice of toast, or one substantial breakfast.
Scrambled eggs on toast with mushrooms belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian breakfast and supper table, where an egg dish with a savoury addition — mushrooms, kidneys, anchovy, tomato — filled the gap between plain boiled eggs and a full cooked breakfast. Commercial mushroom growing in Britain expanded through the nineteenth century, but many cooks still worked with field mushrooms brought in from meadows, which arrived with soil attached. The direction to have the toast ready on a hot fireproof dish reflects a period liking for vessels that could go from heat to table.