Home › To Boil Eggs Hard › To Boil Eggs Hard
To Boil Eggs Hard
1124. Boil them ten minutes, moving them gently to change the under side, and put them by to get cold.
OATMEAL PORRIDGE (a genuine Scotch receipt). 1125. Put as much water as will make as much porridge as is wished into a saucepan, let it boil; then take a handful of meal in the left hand, letting it fall gently into the water while stirring the meal and water quickly round with the right, with a wooden stirrer or spoon; do this till it is the thickness of thick gruel, then salt to the taste; let it boil for ten minutes, add a little more boiling water, and boil it other five minutes, which makes it quite smooth and very digestible (boiling it well is the great secret for making it digestible and nourishing for invalids). It is poured out in pudding dishes for each member of a Scotch family, and they dip each spoonful into a jugful of milk, and thus make a hearty and nourishing breakfast. The poorer class of children often have it for their evening meal too, and in this way it forms the principal food for Scotch children, who seldom ever tire of it till they grow up.
Two very plain preparations, both of which depend on timing rather than technique. The porridge instructions are unusually complete for the period and still work as written.
- Ten minutes for hard eggsTen minutes of gentle boiling gives a fully set, still-tender yolk; much beyond that turns it chalky and grey at the edge. The receipt directs that they be put by to get cold, which stops the cooking.
- Why the eggs are movedMoving the eggs so that the under side changes helps them cook evenly, and is often said to keep the yolk centred, which matters if the eggs are to be halved or sliced for a dish. It does nothing for flavour.
- The mealA Scotch receipt of this date means pinhead or coarse oatmeal, not the rolled oats sold as porridge oats today. Rolled oats absorb water far faster and will thicken before you have finished sprinkling; use them only if you expect a softer, blander result.
- ProportionsNone are given beyond "the thickness of thick gruel." As a working guide, roughly one part oatmeal to five or six parts water by volume gives a pourable porridge that sets as it stands.
- The sprinkling handThe point of letting the meal fall gently while stirring hard is to keep it from clumping. A thin, steady rain of meal into moving water is the whole method; dumping it in produces lumps that no amount of later boiling will smooth.
- Salt after thickeningSalt is added once the meal is in, which is the traditional Scottish order. Fifteen minutes total is a genuine minimum for coarse oatmeal; pinhead meal is better for twenty to thirty, and stirring occasionally prevents catching on the bottom.
- The "digestible" claimLong boiling gelatinises the starch fully, which is what makes the porridge smooth rather than gritty. The nineteenth-century language about invalid diet is period medical opinion, not a nutritional fact.
- ServingThe cold milk is served alongside in a separate bowl or jug, each spoonful of hot porridge dipped before eating. It cools the mouthful and is worth trying once even if you normally pour the milk on top.