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Starched Eggs with Fish Cutlets
6 hard-boiled eggs. 1 cup rich milk. 2 tablespoons butter. 1 tablespoon flour. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1 tablespoon minced parsley. Dash of cayenne. Slice egg in half lengthwise. Make sauce of milk, flour, butter, salt and pepper. Pour over eggs and sprinkle with parsley. Serve with fish cutlets. GREEN CORN WITH GREEN PEPPERS, TOMATOES AND ONIONS. 6 ears corn; cut off half and scrape. 1/2 green pepper. 3 tomatoes, peeled and cut fine. 1 teaspoon chopped onion.
Cook slowly for twenty minutes, or until reduced; season, salt and pepper; add one tablespoonful butter when taking from fire.
Two dishes share the page: eggs in a thin white sauce, and a summer succotash of corn, pepper and tomato. Both are quick, and both depend on judgment the text leaves out.
- "Starched" means starch-thickened"Starched" most likely means starch-thickened — the flour-thickened milk poured over the eggs rather than any treatment of the eggs themselves. Nothing is stiffened; the eggs are simply hard-boiled and sauced.
- The sauce is thinner than you wantOne tablespoon of flour to a cup of milk gives a pouring sauce barely thicker than cream. For a coating sauce that stays on the eggs, use 2 tablespoons flour to the 2 tablespoons butter and cook the roux a minute before adding the milk.
- "Rich milk"Pre-homogenisation, this meant milk that had not been skimmed, closer to today's whole milk with a splash of cream added. Whole milk alone works; half-and-half is nearer the intent.
- Salt and pepper, then cayenneThe ingredient list gives salt and a dash of cayenne, but the method says "salt and pepper." Season with salt and the cayenne only; a dash is unmeasured, and by modern convention is taken as roughly 1/8 teaspoon — enough to warm the sauce without colouring it.
- Fish cutletsIn period usage these are portioned fish: either a thick fillet cut crosswise into serving pieces, or a bound mixture of cooked flaked fish shaped into flat cakes and pan-fried. Any firm white fish, plainly cooked, serves the purpose.
- Serve it hot and assembled lastHalved eggs cool fast and the sauce skins over. Warm the platter, arrange the eggs cut side up, and sauce them at the table's edge rather than in advance.
- "Cut off half and scrape"For the corn dish: slice through the kernels at roughly half their depth, then scrape the cob firmly with the back of the knife to release the starchy milk. That milk is what thickens the vegetables as they reduce.
- Twenty minutes, uncoveredThe corn and tomatoes need to reduce, so leave the pan uncovered over low heat and stir now and then. The butter goes in off the heat so it emulsifies rather than separating.
- YieldSix halved eggs serve about three as a light main with fish, or six as a side. The corn makes roughly two to three cups once reduced, enough for four.
Eggs in white sauce were a workhorse of American household cookery, appearing under a dozen names — à la crème, eggs in cream sauce — and the flour-and-butter sauce Mrs. Wilson uses here is a basic preparation of the kind that turns up throughout household cookery. Mary A. Wilson wrote during and just after the First World War, when the Food Administration was urging Americans to spare meat and wheat, and pairing sauced eggs with a modest portion of fish is exactly the sort of protein economy her columns promoted. The corn dish on the same page belongs to an older and more distinctly American tradition: scraping the cob for its milk is a long-established technique in Southern and Mid-Atlantic cookery, and the combination of green corn, tomatoes, onion and sweet pepper is essentially a late-summer succotash without the beans.