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Poached Eggs
Break eggs in cup ; butter muffin rings. Place in shallow pan and cover with boiling water. Allow two teaspoons of salt to each pint of water. Drop eggs into rings, and cook from five to eight minutes, keeping water below the boiling point during cooking.
Remove the eggs on a buttered skimmer or pancake turner, and place on a round of buttered toast, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and garnish with parsley.
A straightforward poach, with the period's habit of using buttered muffin rings as molds to keep the whites from feathering. Two details need attention: the water temperature and the cooking time.
- Keep the water below a boilThis is the hinge. The book asks only that the water stay "below the boiling point": in practice, water that trembles at the surface with a few bubbles rising rather than one at a rolling boil, which shreds and toughens the white.
- Muffin ringsPlain tinned bands, typically around 3 inches across and roughly an inch deep, sold for baking muffins on a griddle. Egg-poaching rings, crumpet rings, or a wide metal cookie cutter with no handle all do the same job. Butter the inside well or the white will weld to the metal.
- The timing is for a set yolkThe timing is long -- At the eight-minute end of the range the yolk will be firm through; at five it is closer to soft-set. For a yolk that still runs, count about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes from the moment the egg goes in.
- Salt in the waterTwo teaspoons per pint is roughly 2 to 2.5 percent salinity, considerably saltier than most modern instructions. It seasons the white and slightly firms it, but the eggs are also salted again at the table; taste before you add the second seasoning. A teaspoon of vinegar per quart, not mentioned here, helps the whites set if you skip the rings.
- Water depthA "shallow pan" wants enough water to cover the eggs by about half an inch once they are in the rings, so roughly 1 1/2 to 2 inches in a wide saute pan or skillet.
- Breaking into a cup firstWorth keeping. It lets you spot a broken yolk and slide the egg in at water level rather than dropping it from height.
- Lifting them outA slotted spoon works, but let each egg drain a few seconds against the side of the pan or rest it briefly on a folded towel; otherwise the water soaks the toast through.
- YieldOne egg per round of buttered toast, as the recipe directs. Rings will limit how many eggs fit in the pan at once.
The muffin ring is the period marker here. Cooks relied on physical containment to get a neat round shape, and tinned rings were ordinary, inexpensive kitchenware. The long cooking time suggests a preference for firmly set eggs; softer, runnier poaching became the standard presentation later. The book itself was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, one of many food firms that issued full general cookbooks as advertising for a single product line.