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Eggs in the Shell
1. Monogram Eggs--Write the name of the child on the egg shell in liquid fat. Then boil the egg in water in which onion skins are being boiled. The shell will take on a delicate shade of reddish yellow, and the name will be left on the egg shell in white. The egg likewise boiled in water with spinach or parsley will color the shell a pale green. Place the egg in a dainty egg cup, and lay a short story about Bunny or Molly Cottontail, etc., on the tray with the meal. The story to be read while the meal is in progress. 2. Humpty-Dumpty Eggs--Outline the shape of humpty-dumpty on the egg shell before dropping it in the boiling water. Use a soft pencil. 3. If the child displays artistic abilities, an egg served in a colorful Japanese egg cup, with a small Chinese porcelain spoon, will interest him.
A nursery trick more than a recipe: the egg is cooked in the ordinary way while the cooking water does the decorating. The original gives no timing at all, which is the one thing a cook needs here.
- Boiling timeNo time is given. For a large egg lowered into already-boiling water, allow about 6 minutes for a soft yolk and 10 to 11 for firm. Onion-skin water behaves exactly like plain water; the dye does not change the timing.
- The onion-skin dyeUse the dry brown outer skins of yellow onions, a good double handful to a small pan of water, and let them boil 15 to 20 minutes before the egg goes in. Fewer skins give the "reddish yellow" described; a heavy quantity and a long soak off the heat give a deep russet.
- The fat as a resistThis is the hinge of the whole thing. The writing needs to be a continuous greasy line -- the original specifies liquid fat -- applied to a shell that is dry rather than damp. A shell taken straight from the refrigerator will bead with condensation and the fat is likelier to skip, leaving gaps where the dye can take.
- Green from spinach or parsleyExpect very little. Chlorophyll is not a stable dye and the result is a faint tint at best. Boiled spinach water will not give anything like the strength of onion skin.
- The pencilA soft graphite pencil marks the shell only, and the shell is discarded. Draw before boiling as directed, since a hot wet shell will not take a pencil line.
- Cracked shellsDye and onion-flavoured water will pass straight through any crack into the white. Bring the egg to room temperature first and lower it in on a spoon.
- YieldOne egg per child. Onion-skin water keeps in the refrigerator for several days and can be reused, though the colour it gives weakens with each use.
"Invalid cookery" was a standing department in many household manuals from the later nineteenth century into the 1930s, covering the feeding of the sick, the convalescent and the reluctant child -- broths, gruels, junkets, beef tea and coddled eggs. Appetite was a large part of its concern: a patient who would not eat had to be coaxed, and presentation carried much of the burden. Dyeing eggs with onion skins long predates printed cookbooks and is usually traced to European Easter practice, where a fat or wax resist was used to hold pattern lines in white; here the technique is borrowed for the nursery tray. Molly Cottontail was a folk name for the rabbit in American use, and appears in the Uncle Remus stories. Humpty Dumpty was widely understood to be an egg well before this page was written; Tenniel's illustration for Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass is the best-known depiction of him as one, though the egg answer to the rhyme is older than that book. The Japanese egg cup and Chinese porcelain spoon of the third note suggest imported novelty tableware being used as a further inducement to eat.