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Scrambled Ham and Eggs
Put a tablespoonful of butter in the blazer.
Break six eggs into a bowl, add six tablespoonfuls of water, and beat until you can take up a spoonful. Add about a cup of fine-chopped ham and mix well. Pour into the blazer, and cook until creamy, stirring constantly.
A chafing-dish standby from the era when the blazer pan sat on a table at supper parties. It translates directly to a skillet, with one caveat about heat.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame; the water pan beneath it is the bain-marie. A heavy 10-inch skillet over low heat does the same job, though the water bath gives gentler, more forgiving heat if you own the equipment.
- Water, not milkSix tablespoons of water for six eggs, where a modern recipe would reach for milk or cream. Water is generally held to give a lighter curd than dairy, and it will not scorch on the bottom of a blazer; the book itself offers no explanation.
- "Beat until you can take up a spoonful"Probably means beat until whites and yolks are fully combined and the mixture holds together enough to lift on a spoon rather than running off in strings. Thirty seconds with a fork will get you there; over-beating does nothing useful here.
- Low heat is the hingeCook until creamy, stirring constantly, means exactly that. Pull the pan while the eggs still look slightly underdone, since they carry over off the heat. High heat gives you rubbery curds and weeping liquid.
- The hamA cup of fine-chopped ham means cooked, cured ham, not raw. Any leftover baked or boiled ham works; deli ham is fine but tends to be wetter, so pat it dry. The recipe calls for no salt, and the ham is salty enough that none is needed.
- ButterA tablespoon is the minimum. In a modern nonstick skillet it is plenty; in stainless or an old copper blazer, use closer to two.
- YieldSix eggs and a cup of ham serve three as a supper dish, or four alongside toast.
Chafing-dish cookery had a genuine vogue in American households around the turn of the twentieth century, and books like this one catered to it: the dish sat on the table, the hostess cooked in front of her guests, and the whole performance suited late suppers, bachelor rooms and the after-theatre hour when the kitchen fire was out. The repertoire was necessarily limited to what one shallow pan over a spirit lamp could manage in a few minutes, which favoured eggs, cheese and chopped cooked meats. Ham and eggs scrambled together is about as plain as the genre gets, and cured ham had the practical merit of keeping well and needing no cooking, so it could be chopped and waiting in a bowl.