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Egg Toast
Toast one slice of bread, moisten the edges with hot water and spread with butter. Separate the yolks and whites of two eggs; drop the yolks into boiling salted water for a minute and then remove and place them without breaking on the toast. Beat the whites very stiff, spread in a circle around the yolks, season with salt and pepper and put in the oven to brown. Serve hot.
EGGS À LA GOLDENROD-Boil three eggs for fifteen minutes. Separate yolks from whites, chop whites very fine and stir them into a white sauce made of one tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour and a cup of milk. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Cover the bottom of a platter with slices of toast, from which the crust has been trimmed. Pour over the toast the sauce and chopped whites of eggs, and then force the yolks through a potato ricer and sprinkle over the top. Cut two extra slices of toast into small triangles or "points" and on each lay a sprig of parsley.
Two related dishes on one page: a single-serving egg toast, and Eggs à la Goldenrod, the Sunday-supper standby of American cookbooks around 1900. Neither is difficult, but both depend on handling the yolk correctly.
- The hinge: dropping bare yolks in waterA naked yolk will break the moment it hits moving water. Bring the salted water to a boil, cut the heat so the surface is barely trembling, and slide each yolk in from a saucer or a half shell. Lift it out on a slotted spoon and let it drain a second before it goes on the toast, or the butter and bread will go soggy.
- How done the yolk will beA minute in near-boiling water sets only the outer film; the centre stays liquid, and the few minutes under the oven's top heat while the meringue colours will not change that much. Anyone avoiding undercooked egg — pregnancy, small children, compromised immunity — should skip this one or use pasteurised eggs.
- Browning the whitesThe beaten whites are a savoury meringue. The recipe says only 'put in the oven to brown', with no temperature given; a hot oven, in the region of 425F, will colour the peaks quickly, so watch it rather than trusting a time. The broiler works too, watched constantly.
- Moistening the toastWetting the edges with hot water before buttering looks like a practical step rather than a slip. Dry toast under a soft yolk can turn brittle and shatter at the fork; a little steam softens it enough to cut cleanly.
- Fifteen minutes for hard-boiled eggsThat was standard advice and it produces the grey-green ring at the yolk. Ten to twelve minutes in water brought just off the boil, then straight into cold water, gives a yellow yolk that still rices cleanly.
- The white sauceOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of milk is a thin béchamel — deliberately so, since it has to pour over toast rather than sit on it. Cook the roux a full minute before adding milk to lose the raw-flour taste, and add the milk warm to avoid lumps.
- Potato ricerA ricer forces the hard yolks into fine threads, which is where the goldenrod effect comes from. A fine sieve pressed with the back of a spoon, or the small holes of a box grater, does the same job.
- YieldEgg toast as written is one serving. The goldenrod, with three eggs and a cup of sauce, serves two generously at breakfast or three as part of a larger meal.
Eggs à la Goldenrod is generally said to take its name from the look of the finished platter: riced yellow yolk scattered over pale sauce, thought to suggest the goldenrod that blooms along American roadsides in late summer. It belongs to a family of turn-of-the-century dishes built on toast and white sauce — creamed chipped beef, creamed chicken, eggs à la king — that let a household stretch a few eggs or scraps of meat into a hot supper for several people. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, published a cook book that seems to have been intended for something like that reader: a woman running a household on a budget, wanting dishes that looked considered on the plate. The parsley-topped toast points are the tell. They add nothing to the flavour and everything to the presentation, which was presumably the point of naming a dish after a flower in the first place.