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Creamed Eggs
Take two tablespoons of butter; two tablespoons (scant) of flour; one pint of milk; four eggs; one teaspoon of salt; one-fourth teaspoon of pepper; one-half of a small onion; six slices of toast. Boil the eggs twenty minutes, and lay them in cold water; when cold, remove the shells and cut each egg into six pieces. Cut the onion fine. Place the butter in a small frying-pan and when it is hot, slowly cook the onion in it until of a light yellow hue, taking care, however, not to brown either the butter or the onion at all. Remove the onion, add the flour and stir until the paste is smooth and frothy, but do not let it brown in the least. Draw the pan back, gradually add the milk, return to the heat, and when the sauce boils, put in the salt, pepper and eggs. As soon as the eggs are well heated, turn all out upon buttered toast, and serve at once. A few drops of onion juice may be used instead of the onion, thus facilitating the work somewhat.
A plain béchamel with hard-boiled eggs over toast — the sort of supper dish that once carried a household through Sunday night. Only the egg timing genuinely needs rethinking.
- Twenty minutes is far too longEggs boiled twenty minutes turn rubbery, and the yolks acquire the grey-green sulphur ring the cold-water bath here is meant to prevent. Ten to twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into ice water, gives firm yolks that still slice cleanly.
- A pint of milkTwo cups. With two tablespoons of butter and two scant tablespoons of flour, this makes a deliberately thin sauce — pourable rather than clinging. If you want it to sit on the toast rather than soak through, go up to three tablespoons of each.
- "Frothy" but not brownedThis is the hinge. The roux should bubble and smell faintly of biscuit but stay pale; a blond or brown roux would turn the dish beige and nutty, which is not what is wanted. Two minutes over medium-low heat is enough.
- Adding the milkOff the heat, in small additions, whisking each one smooth before the next — that is what "draw the pan back" is doing. Warming the milk first makes it easier, though it is not required.
- Onion juiceThe alternative given at the end means juice pressed or grated from a raw onion, not a bottled product. Grate half a small onion on a fine rasp and use the liquid; the recipe calls for only a few drops, so begin there and add more to taste.
- Season at the endA teaspoon of salt for two cups of sauce is on the generous side once the butter is accounted for. Add half, taste after the eggs go in, and adjust; the eggs dilute the seasoning.
- YieldSix slices of toast, so three servings as a supper dish or six as a first course. The sauce does not reheat well; it should go to the table as soon as the eggs are hot through.
Creamed eggs on toast belongs to the great family of late-nineteenth-century "creamed" dishes — creamed chipped beef, creamed codfish, creamed chicken — all of them a white sauce, something protein-rich, and toast underneath to catch it. The sauce descends from the French béchamel, and the cooking-school movement of the 1880s and 1890s, which taught sauce-making as a foundation skill, did much to spread it among domestic cooks. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, also published cookery and household books aimed at practical middle-class housekeepers, and dishes like this one earned their place by being cheap, quick, and made almost entirely from things already in the house. The careful insistence that neither butter, onion, nor flour should brown "in the least" reads as the schoolroom voice: a white sauce that had taken on colour was, in that era's teaching, a fault.