Goldenrod Eggs

A late-Victorian and early twentieth-century breakfast standard, written in the shorthand a cook of the day would have filled in without thinking. The proportions and quantities are all left to you.

• Quantities to assumeFigure two hard-cooked eggs and one to two toast points per person. Four eggs to a cup of white sauce gives a mixture that mounds on toast rather than running off it.
• The white sauce"Rich" here most likely points to a medium sauce enriched with extra butter or with part cream: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or half milk and half cream. Cook the flour in the butter a full minute before adding liquid so the sauce does not taste raw.
• Season before the whites go inSalt and pepper disperse properly in the hot sauce; once the chopped whites are folded through, the seasoning sits on their surfaces unevenly. Some cooks add a grating of nutmeg to a white sauce, though this recipe does not call for it.
• Hard-cooked, not hard-boiledBring the eggs just to a boil, cover, take off the heat and let stand 12 minutes, then cool in cold water. A hard rolling boil gives the rubbery white and green-grey rim that ruins the look of the dish.
• Chop the whitesThe recipe says only "place" them in the sauce. Cut them into rough quarter-inch dice; whole or halved whites will not spoon out evenly over toast.
• Sieving the yolksPush the yolks through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon. They go through more easily while still slightly warm; thoroughly chilled yolks are firmer and harder to reduce to the fine, even crumb the name depends on.
• Toast pointsA slice of firm white bread, toasted, crusts trimmed, cut corner to corner into four triangles. Toast at the last moment; the sauce will soften it quickly.