Eggs, to Pickle
INGREDIENTS.- 16 eggs, 1 quart of vinegar, 1/2 oz. of black pepper, oz. of Jamaica pepper, oz. of ginger. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 10d.
Boil the eggs for 12 minutes, then dip them into cold water, and take off the shells. Put the vinegar, with the pepper and ginger into a stewpan, and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Now place the eggs in a jar, pour over them the vinegar, &c., boiling hot, and, when cold, tie them down with bladder to exclude the air.
This pickle will be ready for use in a month.
SEASONABLE.
This should be made about Easter, as at this time eggs are plentiful and cheap. A store of pickled eggs will be found very useful.
Eggs au Plat, or au Miroir (served on the Dish in which they are Cooked). INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 or 3 persons.-4 eggs, 1 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, 5d.
Butter a dish rather thickly with good fresh butter; melt it, break the eggs into it the same as for poaching, sprinkle them with white pepper and fine salt, and put the remainder of the butter, cut into very small pieces, on the top of them.
Put the dish on a hot plate, or in the oven, or before the fire, and let it remain until the whites become set, but not hard, when serve immediately, placing the dish they were cooked in on another. To hasten the cooking of the eggs, a salamander may be held over them for a minute; but great care must be taken that they are not too much done. This is an exceedingly nice dish, and one very easily prepared for breakfast.
TIME.-3 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
EGGS, POACHED.
Two recipes sit side by side here. The eggs au plat translate directly to a modern kitchen; the pickled eggs do not, and the reasons are worth understanding before you read past them.
- Why the pickle failsPeeled hard-boiled eggs are a dense, low-acid food. Vinegar takes weeks to penetrate to the yolk, so the centre of each egg can remain above the pH at which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate — and the interior of a sealed jar is exactly the oxygen-free environment they need. Home-pickled eggs held at room temperature are a documented cause of botulism, and no current authority gives a shelf-stable method. Use a modern refrigerated recipe with a measured brine if you want pickled eggs.
- The bladder sealA pig's bladder tied over the jar mouth and left to dry was the Victorian answer to an airtight lid. It excludes air well enough to create the anaerobic conditions described above while doing nothing to sterilise the contents. The eggs are boiled for 12 minutes, which kills vegetative bacteria but not spores, and nothing later in the method sterilises the sealed jar.
- Missing quantitiesThe black pepper is given as 1/2 oz., which matches the printed page. The Jamaica pepper and ginger are still listed as bare "oz." with no fraction, so those two weights have to be guessed; a quarter-ounce of each suits a quart of vinegar.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice, the dried berry of Pimenta dioica. It is unrelated to peppercorns despite the name, and is sold as whole allspice today.
- Eggs au plat: the dish is the panA shallow flameproof earthenware or metal dish, buttered thickly, set over gentle heat, before the fire, or in the oven; the recipe gives no temperature. It goes to the table inside a second dish, which is the plate rather than a bain-marie. The whites should just set and the yolks stay liquid; three minutes over direct heat is realistic, a few minutes longer in the oven.
- SalamanderA flat iron plate on a long handle, heated red in the fire and held above food to brown the surface. A grill element or a blowtorch does the same work, though for eggs the point is only to firm the tops of the whites without cooking the yolks.
- YieldFour eggs and an ounce of butter serves two, or three at a stretch alongside toast. Scale by counting two eggs a head and buttering the dish generously enough that the whites never touch dry metal.
The pickling note is a piece of household economics as much as cookery: Beeton times it to Easter because that is when hens, coming back into lay after the short days of winter, flood the market and eggs are at their cheapest. Preserving the glut for the lean months was the whole point, and vinegar, spice and a bladder cover were the tools available before reliable refrigeration. The eggs au plat opposite belong to the other half of the same book — the fashionable French-influenced breakfast dish, named for being cooked and served in one vessel, with au miroir often said to describe the glossy unbroken surface of the yolks. That both appear in the same book shows how far Beeton's readership stretched, from the cook laying in stores to the household serving eggs in their own porcelain dish.