Kedgaree
1/2 cup codfish 1/2 cup boiled rice 4 eggs Dash of red pepper 1/4 teaspoon onion juice Soak the codfish in cold water; drain; place over the fire in fresh water; bring to a boil and drain again. Mix with the rice; add the seasoning; place in a hot buttered pan and stir until the entire mixture is heated. Then add the eggs, well beaten; cook for a minute and serve. 6 eggs
A stovetop kedgeree closer to scrambled eggs than to the rice pilaf most cooks expect. It moves fast once the eggs go in, so have everything measured before you start.
- The codfish is salt cod"Codfish" in a book of this era means dried salt cod, which is why it is soaked and then boiled and drained. Modern salt cod is often heavily cured; give it a longer soak with a change or two of water, and taste before adding any salt of your own. Half a cup is roughly 2 to 3 oz of flaked fish, though the recipe does not say whether it is measured before or after cooking.
- Red pepper is cayenneA "dash of red pepper" means ground cayenne, not paprika and not crushed chile flakes. An eighth of a teaspoon is enough for this quantity.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate it directly into the pan. A small onion will yield rather more juice than the quarter teaspoon called for.
- The trailing "6 eggs"The ingredient list calls for 4 eggs and the line after the method reads "6 eggs." The label is missing, so what it refers to cannot be determined; it may be a stray fragment from a neighbouring entry or an alternative quantity. Four eggs to half a cup each of fish and rice is the balance that works.
- Don't overcook the eggsThe whole point of "cook for a minute" is that the fish and rice are already hot, so the eggs only need to set softly around them. Keep the heat moderate and pull the pan while the mixture still looks slightly wet; it carries on cooking on the plate.
- RiceBoiled long-grain rice, cooked and cooled, holds its shape best. Rice cooked the day before and broken up with a fork is better here than freshly boiled rice, which clumps.
- YieldServes two as a breakfast or light supper dish. It does not reheat well -- the eggs turn watery -- so make what will be eaten.
Kedgeree came into British cooking from India, generally traced to khichri, a dish of rice and pulses that Anglo-Indian households adapted by adding fish and hard-boiled egg. By the late nineteenth century it was a fixture of the British breakfast sideboard, usually made with smoked haddock. American cookbooks picked it up in a simplified form, and this version shows how far it travelled: the pulses are gone, the smoked haddock has become soaked salt cod, and the eggs are beaten into the mixture rather than sliced over the top. What remains is a way of stretching a few eggs with whatever cooked rice and cured fish the pantry held.