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Battered or Scrambled Eggs
In a frying-pan, place one tablespoon of butter for each egg to be used. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are well mixed. Season with salt and pepper and add one to three tablespoons of milk or cream for each egg. Pour into the hot fat and cook slowly, stirring constantly until the eggs are of the desired consistency. Serve at once. A little onion-juice or chopped parsley may be added to the eggs, if desired. Eggs cooked in this way in the top of a double boiler will be more creamy than those cooked in a frying-pan.
A plain method for soft scrambled eggs, written when butter was measured generously and low heat was the whole technique. Two of its ratios are worth adjusting before you start.
- The butter is the one number to cutA tablespoon of butter per egg is roughly three times what a modern cook uses. One to two teaspoons per egg is ample in a nonstick or well-seasoned pan; the full amount will pool and separate out of the finished curd.
- Milk: take the low endOne tablespoon per egg gives a tender scramble. Three tablespoons per egg is close to the volume of the egg itself, and at that ratio the curds stay very loose and are apt to weep water onto the plate. Cream, being richer, holds together better than milk if you want more than a spoonful.
- "Cook slowly" means low, not mediumThis is the hinge of the recipe. Keep the pan at low heat and pull it off the burner while the eggs still look slightly underdone -- residual heat finishes them. High heat squeezes moisture out of the protein and gives you dry, grainy curds no amount of stirring will fix.
- The double boiler is not a footnoteThe last sentence is the better method. Over barely simmering water the eggs heat gradually rather than gripping a hot pan surface, so they set slowly into a loose custard. It is slower than the frying-pan and needs constant stirring, and the result is closer to a soft custard than to a diner scramble.
- Onion-juiceOnce made by grating an onion and pressing the pulp through cloth. A quarter teaspoon of finely grated onion, or a pinch of onion powder, does the same job for a two- or three-egg portion.
- Season at the end if the eggs are waterySalt in raw beaten egg is sometimes said to draw out moisture if the mixture stands, though this is disputed. Beating and cooking immediately, as here, it makes little practical difference.
- YieldThe recipe scales by the egg and gives no yield; two to three eggs per person is a usual portion. A large batch in one pan will cook unevenly unless the pan is wide enough to keep the layer shallow.
Batter does derive from a word for beating (Old French batre) rather than from any sense of a coating for frying, and "buttered eggs" appears in English and Irish cookery for much the same dish. How far "battered eggs" circulated as a name of its own, and whether the two were routinely confused, is not clear from the record. The instruction to finish the eggs in a double boiler reflects a general fondness for that vessel: gentle, indirect heat was a common household answer to a protein that curdled easily.