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Scrambled Eggs with Green Peppers
Place one tablespoon of butter in a frying-pan. Break six eggs in a bowl; add without breaking the eggs two tablespoons of cream, pepper and salt. Turn all into the hot butter and as the eggs begin to cook quickly add two finely chopped sweet peppers from which the seeds have been removed.
Stir incessantly in all directions until the mass is creamy. Serve on toast.
A simple set of scrambled eggs, notable mainly for the instruction not to beat them and for raw peppers going in partway through. Both details are worth respecting.
- "Without breaking the eggs"The eggs are cracked into a bowl with the cream and seasoning but deliberately not beaten, so the finished dish comes out marbled with streaks of white and yolk rather than uniformly yellow. If you want the more familiar even scramble, whisk them; the recipe as written wants the streaks.
- Heat is the hinge"Stir incessantly in all directions until the mass is creamy" only works over moderate to low heat. On high heat the curd sets before you can move it and the cream weeps out. Pull the pan from the burner while the eggs still look slightly underdone; residual heat finishes them.
- Sweet peppersThese are bell peppers, raw and finely chopped, added once the eggs have begun to set. Two of them for six eggs is a substantial amount of moisture and crunch. If you prefer them tender, soften them in the butter first and add the eggs after.
- CreamTwo tablespoons; the recipe does not specify a grade, and period "cream" was often lighter than modern heavy cream. Heavy or whipping cream gives the richest curd; half-and-half or whole milk will work but gives a looser, less rich one.
- The panA "frying-pan" here is any shallow skillet. Nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron makes the constant stirring far easier; in a bare pan you may want more butter than the single tablespoon called for.
- YieldSix eggs on toast serves three, or two generously at breakfast. Have the toast made and waiting, since the eggs cannot be held.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern and magazine publisher Butterick, whose business was selling practical guidance to American housewives alongside dress patterns, and its egg chapter offers many variations on the same six eggs. Scrambled eggs with green peppers sits in a long line of such variations. The instruction not to beat the eggs is worth noting, though it was not universal: other American writers of the period direct that the eggs be beaten slightly before scrambling.