Spanish Eggs
6 eggs 2 tablespoons condensed tomato or 1/3 cup stewed tomato 1 teaspoon celery salt 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 small onion 2 dozen ripe olives 1 teaspoon salt Beat the eggs slightly; put the tomato through a colander, and add to the beaten eggs; add the lemon juice, salt, celery salt, and the grated onion. Cut the olives from the stones, and add to the mixture. Turn into a double boiler, and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. This may be served on toast if desired.
This is soft-scrambled eggs enriched with tomato and olives, cooked over water so they stay creamy. The method is sound; only a few of the ingredient names need translating.
- Condensed tomato"Condensed tomato" here most likely means concentrated tomato pulp, close to what we now sell as tomato pur han than a condy than a condensed soup; the stated alternative of 1/3 cup stewed tomato for 2 tablespoons implies a concentrate of roughly that strength. Either way the flavour should be present but not dominant.
- Putting tomato through a colanderThe straining step exists to remove skin and seeds from home-stewed tomatoes. Canned purée needs no sieving; go straight into the eggs.
- Ripe olives"Ripe olives" in American usage of the period means olives picked ripe and canned, mild rather than brine-sharp; the canned trade was dominated by California. Two dozen comes to roughly 1/2 cup once pitted and chopped. Cured Greek or oil-packed black olives will overwhelm the dish; use fewer if that is all you have.
- Salt, twice overA teaspoon of salt plus a teaspoon of celery salt plus 24 olives is a great deal of sodium by current tastes. Start with half the salt, and season at the end once the olives have had their say.
- Grated onionGrate the onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the juice along with the pulp. Raw grated onion in a gently cooked egg mixture stays assertive, so a small onion means small.
- The double boiler is the pointThe acid from the tomato and lemon juice makes the eggs prone to curdling over direct heat. Keep the water below a simmer, stir constantly, and pull the pan while the mixture is still glossy and slightly loose — it firms as it cools.
- TimingReckon on something in the region of ten minutes over water, considerably longer than pan-scrambling, and longer still if the water is kept well below a simmer. It cannot be hurried; direct heat gives you weeping curds.
- YieldSix eggs serves three as a light main course, or four on toast. Have the toast ready before the eggs are, not after.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in America around the First World War, when Food Administration campaigns pressed households toward "meatless days" and eggs, cheese and beans were promoted as the patriotic substitutes for beef and pork. Dishes like this one belong to a broader tradition of meatless cookery that long predates 1917: a protein centre built entirely from eggs, stretched and made interesting by strong seasonings rather than by meat. The name "Spanish" in American cookery of the era rarely indicated any Spanish origin — it functioned as shorthand for tomato, onion and sometimes pepper or olives, the same convention that gave us Spanish rice and Spanish sauce. The ripe olives point to California, whose canned black olive industry was well established by the 1910s.