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Eggs (Creole style Have prepared)
(Creole style.) Have prepared on a hot serving-dish a can of tomatoes, stewed until they are reduced to a scant pint, and upon the tomatoes rounds of buttered toast for each egg to be served. Break some eggs, one by one, into a cup, and turn them into the blazer two-thirds filled with hot water; turn the flame low and put on the chafing-dish cover; if the water boils, turn down the flame. When the eggs are nicely poached, remove with a skimmer to the toast. Pour out the water and melt in the blazer, browning if desired, two tablespoonfuls of butter; add one tablespoonful of lemon juice; heat
A chafing-dish supper dish: poached eggs on toast over stewed tomatoes, finished with browned butter and lemon. The text breaks off mid-sentence at "heat," but the intent is clear — heat the butter and lemon together and pour it over the eggs at the table.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame; the hot-water bath below is the bain-marie. Any wide, shallow saucepan or a deep skillet with a lid does the same work on a stovetop over low heat.
- Canned tomatoes have shrunkCan sizes around 1900 were not yet standardised, but a can of tomatoes commonly held somewhere between a pint and a quart. To end up with a scant pint (about 2 cups) of thick stewed tomato, start with a 28-ounce can and reduce it uncovered over medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring so it does not catch. Season with salt and pepper; the original gives no seasoning.
- Poaching temperatureThe instruction to turn the flame down if the water boils is the hinge of the whole thing. Poaching water should be at a bare shiver, around 180F — a rolling boil shreds the whites. A teaspoon of vinegar in the water helps them set, though it is not in the original.
- TimingThree to four minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk; five gives a firm one. The chafing-dish lid speeds the top of the egg along, so check at three.
- Order of workEverything is assembled before the eggs go in. Tomatoes stewed and spread on the hot dish, toast buttered and laid on top, then the eggs poached and lifted straight onto the toast. Once the eggs are out, the water is dumped and the same pan makes the sauce, which is why the dish works over a single flame.
- The finishTwo tablespoons butter browned to a nutty color, then one tablespoon lemon juice; the original adds the juice and then heats, though it will spit when it goes in. This is browned butter with lemon, close to the beurre noir served on skate and on brains in the same period.
- YieldAs written, one or two eggs per person; the sauce quantity suits four eggs. Double the butter and lemon if you are poaching six or more.
Chafing-dish cookery had a genuine vogue in American households around 1900, sold as the equipment of informal late suppers, bachelor rooms and after-theater entertaining — food cooked at the table by the host rather than carried up from a kitchen. That explains the shape of this recipe: one pan, one flame, and a sequence arranged so the water bath becomes the sauce pan. The "Creole style" label was often applied loosely to tomato-based preparations in northern cookbooks of the era, and the dish here has little to do with New Orleans practice beyond the tomatoes; what the eggs actually rest on is a French idea, poached eggs with browned butter and lemon, which appears in the period's cookery under names like eggs au beurre noir. Canned tomatoes made it possible at all — by the 1890s they were a major and cheap canned commodity in America, and cookbooks leaned on them heavily for exactly this kind of quick, showy supper.