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Eggs à la Livingstone
1/2 cup stewed and strained tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon paprika 2 tablespoons butter Pâté de foie gras Finely chopped truffles Beat eggs slightly, and add tomatoes, salt, and paprika. Melt butter in an omelet pan, add seasoned eggs, and cook same as Scrambled Eggs. Spread slices of toasted bread with pâté de foie gras. Pour over the eggs, and sprinkle with truffles.
Scrambled Eggs, Country Style Heat omelet pan, put in two tablespoons butter, and when melted turn in four unbeaten eggs. Cook until white is partially set, then stir until cooking is completed, when whites will be thoroughly set. Season with salt and pepper.
A soft scramble enriched with tomato, served on foie gras toast. It is a rich-course egg dish from Fannie Farmer's era, and the whole thing succeeds or fails on how gently the eggs are cooked.
- Egg countThe ingredient list as printed does not give a number of eggs. Half a cup of strained tomato and two tablespoons of butter suit six eggs, which serves three to four on toast.
- PaprikaRead the paprika as a quarter teaspoon. Plain sweet paprika is the safe reading; smoked paprika will overwhelm the tomato.
- Stewed and strained tomatoesCook fresh or canned tomatoes down and push them through a sieve to remove skin and seed, so you are left with a thin purée. Passata is the nearest ready substitute; tomato paste is far too concentrated.
- Watch the moistureAdding half a cup of liquid to eggs makes them prone to weeping. Reduce the strained tomato until it just coats a spoon before it goes in, or the finished eggs will pool on the toast.
- Low heat, and stop earlyThe hinge of the dish. Scramble over low heat, stirring constantly, and pull the pan while the curds still look slightly underdone — carryover heat finishes them. Period instructions to cook until "thoroughly set" produce a dry, grainy result by modern taste.
- Omelet panA well-seasoned or nonstick skillet of eight to ten inches. Nothing about the original pan matters except that eggs release cleanly from it.
- Pâté de foie grasSold as a smooth spreadable tin or terrine. Its production and sale are restricted in some jurisdictions; a good chicken liver pâté or mousse de foie de volaille stands in without changing the character of the dish much.
- TrufflesFinely chopped fresh or preserved black truffle, used as a garnish rather than a flavouring. Truffle oil is a different and much louder ingredient; a little grated truffle from a jar is closer to the intent.
- AssemblyToast the bread and spread it just before serving — pâté on warm toast softens quickly, and the eggs should go on hot.
The attribution here is conventional rather than documented, and the name tells you less than the ingredients do. What the ingredients tell you is that this is a luxury egg course from the period when foie gras and truffles were the standard shorthand for expense on an American menu, both generally imported in tins from France. The egg chapter of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book holds a long series of these dressed-up variations alongside the plainest preparations, which is a fair picture of how a single cheap staple was expected to stretch across the whole social range of a household's meals.