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Egg Poτρiε
2 CUPS BOILING WATER 6 EGGS PEPPER BUTTER, SIZE OF AN EGG SHORT BISCUIT DOUGH Pour water in baking dish, break eggs in, leaving them whole, and season well with pepper and butter. Cover with a layer of dumplings made from short biscuit dough, then a second layer of eggs, topped with dumplin's. Bake golden, using more boiling water if needed.
Some folks say this tastes about the same as chicken pie, but that's the same sort of self-protective pity you get in the old camp chorus-"If we had some bacon we'd have bacon and eggs, if we had any eggs."
A camp-style egg pie: whole eggs poached in water under and between layers of biscuit dough, baked until the top browns. The original omits both oven temperature and salt, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- Butter, size of an eggRoughly 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Old cookery measured fat by comparison to eggs, walnuts and hazelnuts; the egg is the largest of the three.
- Short biscuit doughA plain baking-powder biscuit dough made rich with fat -- "short" means a high proportion of butter or lard to flour. Roughly 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/3 cup fat and enough milk to bind. Keep it stiff enough to drop in spoonfuls; a slack dough dissolves into the water.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 400-425F, which is the range biscuit dough wants; lower and the dumplings sit pale and gummy on top.
- The eggsSix eggs across two layers; the recipe does not say how they are divided, so an even three below and three above is a reasonable reading. They set by steam and simmering water rather than by direct heat, so they finish soft-yolked to just-firm depending on how long the dish stays in. Reckon 20-25 minutes, and check that the underside of the dumpling layer is cooked through, not raw dough.
- Season it properlyOnly pepper and butter are listed. Salt the water and the dough, or the finished dish is flat -- eggs and plain biscuit both need it.
- Keep the water upThe instruction to add more boiling water matters more than it looks. If the dish dries out the dumplings scorch on the bottom and the eggs turn to rubber; keep an inch of liquid under the dough throughout, and add it boiling so the oven does not lose heat.
- Vessel and yieldA deep baking dish or a Dutch oven of about 2 quarts. It serves three or four as a main dish, and it does not keep or reheat well -- the dumplings turn heavy.
The recipe itself likens the dish to chicken pie -- the same biscuit-dough dumplings baked over a buttered liquid, with eggs standing in for the meat, though here the liquid is plain water rather than broth. The closing joke about bacon and eggs is described in the text as an old camp chorus, and its inclusion tells you the book was written for people who expected to cook with whatever was actually in the pack.