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Scrambled Eggs with Cheese
1/2 pound of cheese grated or cut into small pieces 8 whites of eggs 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley A pinch of nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon salt Beat the whites slightly, mix them with the other ingredients; cook over a very slow fire, stirring constantly, so that the cheese may be melted by the time the eggs are cooked. In food value the dish is equal to nearly two pounds of average beef.
An eight-white scramble bound with half a pound of cheese, from a chapter designed to use up the whites left over when yolks went into custards and mayonnaise. The heat management is the whole recipe.
- Very low heat, and mean itEgg whites set at a lower temperature than yolks and turn squeaky and weeping the moment they overshoot. Use the lowest burner setting, or a bowl over barely simmering water, and pull the pan off the heat while the mixture still looks slightly loose.
- Beat only slightlyThe instruction is deliberate. Whipping air into the whites gives a foam that collapses into a rubbery curd once the cheese melts into it; a few strokes with a fork to break them up is enough.
- Choose a cheese that meltsHalf a pound is a lot of cheese for eight whites, so it needs to melt smoothly rather than break. A young Cheddar, Gruyere, or a mild Swiss works; aged, crumbly or pre-shredded cheeses (which are coated in starch) will go grainy or stringy.
- Grate rather than cubeThe recipe offers both, but small pieces melt unevenly at this low a temperature and leave you cooking the whites too long while you wait. Grated cheese disperses before the eggs set.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon on top of half a pound of cheese is generous. Taste the cheese first and hold the salt back until the end if it is a sharp or well-aged one.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; on these quantities it would stretch to about four as a light main course with toast, or six as part of a larger meal. It is rich enough that smaller portions are the better choice.
- The food value claim"Equal to nearly two pounds of average beef" reflects period protein arithmetic and does not hold up. Eight whites and half a pound of cheese supply roughly 85 grams of protein, in the region of a pound of beef rather than two.
Meatless cookbooks of the 1910s were written less for vegetarians on principle than for households told to conserve meat, first by the domestic-science movement and then in earnest during the First World War, when food administrations in Britain and the United States pressed meatless days on the public. The relentless equivalence claims -- this dish equals so many pounds of beef -- come out of the new science of food chemistry, which had learned to measure protein and was confident that protein was protein whatever its source. A separate chapter devoted to whites of eggs also reflects a kitchen where yolks were spent freely on custards, sauces and mayonnaise, leaving a bowl of whites that a thrifty cook was expected to account for rather than discard. Cheese did the heavy lifting in nearly all such books: cheap, keeping well, and rich in exactly the protein the charts were counting.