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Stuffed Eggs
6 eggs hard-cooked cup white sauce 1 tablespoon chopped red pepper ½ cup finely minced chicken or other meat salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce Cut eggs in halves lengthwise, remove yolks, and mash. Add meat and seasonings; moisten with white sauce; press in shape of ball and return to white. These eggs may be placed in a dish, covered with white sauce and buttered crumbs, and baked; or covered with a small square of paraffine paper daintily twisted at the ends, for a picnic dish. 2 eggs
A straightforward stuffed-egg filling bound with white sauce rather than mayonnaise, which is what makes the baked version work. Two measurements in the original have dropped their fractions in printing, so read them as guides.
- The missing fraction"cup white sauce" appears to have lost its fraction; the recipe gives no usable amount. Use only as much as moistens the mashed yolks and meat enough to hold a ball, perhaps a quarter cup, and make more sauce separately if you mean to coat and bake them.
- "2 eggs" at the endThis trailing line does not belong to the ingredient list as printed and cannot be interpreted with any confidence; it may be a fragment carried over from a neighbouring recipe. Ignore it and judge quantities yourself — six eggs give twelve halves.
- Red pepperHere it means sweet red pepper flesh or canned pimiento, not cayenne. A tablespoon of chopped jarred pimiento, drained, is the closest thing to what the author had.
- Return to white"Return to white" means pack the filling back into the hollowed whites; "press in shape of ball" gives a domed mound rather than a flat scoop.
- White sauceA thin béchamel: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk, cooked a few minutes so it does not taste of raw flour. Season it, since the eggs themselves are only lightly seasoned.
- If you bake themNo temperature is given. Around 350F for 15 to 20 minutes is enough to heat through and brown the crumbs; the eggs are already cooked, and longer baking turns the whites tough and weeping.
- Paraffine paperWaxed paper. It is still sold and still works for the picnic version, though the twisted-end wrapper is decoration rather than a seal; keep them cold.
- The meatAny cooked poultry or ham, minced fine enough to disappear into the yolk; the recipe allows "chicken or other meat" without preference. The filling should read as seasoned yolk with texture, not as meat salad.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like most branded cookbooks of the early 1900s it ranges far beyond the product it was meant to sell. Filled hard-cooked eggs are very old, appearing in European cookery long before the term "deviled" attached itself to the spiced version; the distinguishing mark of this period is the binder. Here it is white sauce, which had the practical advantage of doubling as the coating for a baked dish. The waxed-paper wrapper points to the era's enthusiasm for the packed picnic and the boxed lunch, when a dish that travelled without a plate was worth printing.