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Scrambled Eggs (This famous breakfast)
This famous breakfast and garnishing dish can best be made by the use of Blanchard Evaporated Eggs.
Put two heaping tablespoonfuls of Blanchard Evaporated Eggs into six tablespoonfuls of water-stir until entirely dissolved. Put the mixture into a cooking dish greased with butter and stir slightly until cooked through. Serve very hot on buttered toast, or use as garnish on grilled meats, poultry or game.
Note: The above is the equivalent of two eggs. If more than two eggs is desired, add the portions in same manner.
This is a branded-ingredient recipe: the whole point is to sell dried egg. The method still works with modern whole-egg powder, and works better with two fresh eggs.
- Blanchard Evaporated EggsA commercial desiccated whole-egg powder, apparently no longer made. Modern whole-egg powder (sold for baking and camping) is the nearest equivalent; the recipe's two heaping tablespoons to six of water works out at roughly 1:3 by volume, though modern brands differ in the ratio they recommend, so follow the packet.
- Or simply use fresh eggsTwo large fresh eggs, beaten with a tablespoon of water or cream, give the same yield and better flavor and texture. Nothing in the method depends on the powder.
- Hydrate before heatingReconstituted egg powder is generally better for a few minutes' standing after it dissolves; stir until no lumps remain, then rest it before it goes near the heat.
- "Stir slightly until cooked through" is the weak pointDried egg overcooks fast and turns grey-green and rubbery. Use low heat, a wide pan, and pull it off while the curds are still glossy and slightly loose; residual heat finishes them.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Salt at the end rather than in the water, and add pepper off the heat; a knob of butter stirred in at the finish softens the drier texture of powdered egg.
- "Cooking dish"A skillet or small saucepan over direct heat, not a baking dish. A nonstick or well-seasoned pan matters here because reconstituted egg grips bare metal.
- YieldTwo eggs' worth serves one person on toast, or garnishes two to three plates of grilled meat. Scale in the same 1:3 proportion.
Dried whole egg was a late nineteenth-century industrial product: liquid egg was dried down and ground, giving grocers and bakers a shelf-stable substitute that travelled and kept without ice. Cookbooks like this one were often produced or subsidised by a manufacturer, and the tell is in the wording here, where a dish everyone already knew how to make is presented as something that "can best be made" with one named brand. Blanchard was one of several such trade names. Powdered egg is now strongly associated with wartime rationing, an association it did not yet carry when this was written.