Eggs Huntington
4 "hard-boiled" eggs 1 tablespoon butter 1½ tablespoons flour 1/3 cup white stock 1/3 cup milk ½ teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Grated cheese ¾ cup buttered cracker crumbs Make a sauce of the butter, flour, stock, and milk; add eggs finely chopped and salt and cayenne. Fill buttered ramequin dishes with mixture, sprinkle with grated cheese, cover with cracker crumbs, and bake in a moderate oven until crumbs are brown.
Egg Farci I Cut "hard-boiled " eggs in halves, crosswise. Remove yolks, and put whites aside in pairs. Mash yolks, and add equal amount of cold cooked chicken or veal, finely chopped. Moisten with melted butter or Mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt, pepper, lemon juice, mustard, and cayenne. Shape and refill whites.
A small egg gratin built on a thick white sauce, baked in individual dishes. It comes together in about twenty minutes and is best treated as a light supper or luncheon dish rather than a side.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F; the recipe gives no temperature. The filling is already cooked, so the bake is only to set the mixture through and brown the crumbs, on the order of 12 to 18 minutes. Watch the top rather than the clock.
- Ramequin dishesSmall individual ceramic or glass ramekins of 4 to 6 oz each. Four eggs fills three or four of them; one large shallow gratin dish works equally well, with a few extra minutes in the oven.
- White stockVeal or chicken stock made without browning the bones, so the sauce stays pale. Ordinary unsalted chicken stock is a fair substitute; if it is dark or heavily reduced the dish will taste of gravy instead of eggs.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon butter and one and a half of flour to two-thirds cup total liquid gives a very stiff sauce, which is deliberate " it must hold the chopped egg together in a spoonable mass. Cook the roux a minute before adding liquid, and add the liquid warm to avoid lumps.
- SaltThe quantity printed for salt is out of proportion to a dish this size. Start with a scant half teaspoon, taste after the cheese goes on, and adjust.
- CheeseAny dry grating cheese; a well-aged cheddar or Parmesan-style cheese does the job. About a quarter cup total, sprinkled thinly, is enough to season without pulling into strings.
- Buttered cracker crumbsPlain soda or saltine crackers crushed and tossed with melted butter, roughly a tablespoon of butter to half a cup of crumbs. Panko treated the same way browns more evenly if crackers are not to hand.
- EggsChop the hard-cooked eggs fine but not to a paste; visible flecks of white give the dish its texture. Cook the eggs 10 to 12 minutes and cool them promptly so the yolks stay yellow rather than grey.
- YieldServes three to four as a first course or light lunch, with toast or a green salad.
Named dishes of this kind " a bound mixture baked in individual dishes under crumbs " filled a real need in turn-of-the-century American households, where hard-boiled eggs, a little stock and a spoonful of cheese could be turned into something presentable for luncheon or a chafing-dish supper. Fannie Farmer's egg chapter is full of them, and the personal or place names attached (Huntington, Bombay) rarely have a documented origin; they were the period's way of distinguishing one variation on eggs-in-white-sauce from the next. The ramekin itself was a fashionable piece of table equipment in the 1890s and 1900s, and cookbooks of the era leaned on it heavily.