Eggs à la Turk
Prepare Scrambled Eggs, and pour over six slices of toasted bread. Put one tablespoon Tomato Purée (see p. 98) on each piece, and in the centre of purée one-half tablespoon chickens' livers sautéd in bacon fat. 4 eggs
An assembly recipe rather than a cooking one: the only real work is scrambling four eggs softly and not overcooking the livers. Fannie Farmer's shorthand assumes you already have tomato purée and toast underway.
- Yield and proportionFour eggs across six slices of toast is a thin layer by modern standards — but it is meant as a breakfast or luncheon dish, not a plateful of eggs. Six to eight eggs gives a more generous serving for six; for four people, keep the four eggs and use four slices.
- The hinge: soft scramblingThe eggs must stay loose and creamy, because they will sit under purée and liver and continue to set on hot toast. Take them off the heat while still visibly moist and slightly underdone.
- Chicken liversTrim the green-tinged bile spots and connective tissue, pat dry, and sauté in bacon fat over fairly high heat for about two to three minutes total, so they are browned outside and just faintly pink within. Livers cooked through to grey turn dry and grainy. Chop them to a coarse dice before spooning onto the purée.
- Tomato puréeTomato pur o on (p. 98) is a period pur e rather than the modern canned paste sold under that name it was most likely a cooked-down, seasoned tomato closer to a thick sauce. Canned crushed tomatoes reduced with a little butter, salt and pepper are the nearest equivalent; undiluted tomato paste will be too dense and sharp.
- Bacon fatRendered bacon fat was a standing kitchen ingredient in American households of the period and supplies much of the seasoning here, since the recipe calls for none. Butter works but changes the dish; if you use it, add a pinch of salt to the livers.
- ToastCut the crusts and use a firm white bread that will hold up under wet purée. Assemble and serve immediately, since the toast softens within a minute or two.
Nineteenth-century American and English cookbooks appear to have attached "à la Turque" or "Turk" to a scattering of dishes that seem to have had little in common beyond tomato, and often rice or a sharply seasoned garnish the tag is generally taken to have functioned as shorthand for eastern Mediterranean colour rather than as a claim of Turkish origin. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book devotes a long chapter to eggs, and this recipe is one of a number of variations built on the same scrambled base, differing only in what is spooned on top. The use of chicken livers is often said to be characteristic of the period's thrift the giblets came with the bird, and a household that roasted a chicken would have had them to spend on the next morning's breakfast.