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Stirred Eggs
Take three eggs; one-fourth pint of milk; one tablespoon of butter; one-fourth saltspoon of salt. Place the butter in the chafing-dish, beat the eggs until light, add to them the milk and salt, and when the butter is quite hot add this mixture, stirring with a silver fork until the eggs are creamy and cooked sufficiently. Serve on toast.
A chafing-dish scramble, written for a table-side burner rather than a stove. The proportions are wetter than most modern scrambles, which is deliberate: the result is meant to be spoonably creamy on toast.
- A quarter pint of milkThat is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) to three eggs, a very high ratio. Expect loose, custardy curds rather than fluffy ones; if you want something that holds its shape on the toast, cut the milk to 2 tablespoons.
- A quarter saltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so a quarter of one is roughly a pinch. Most cooks will want a full 1/4 teaspoon for three eggs.
- The chafing-dishThe blazer pan sits over a spirit lamp, giving gentle heat, gentler still if the hot-water pan is used beneath it. On a modern stove use the lowest burner setting or a bowl over barely simmering water; a hot pan will set the eggs into grains before the milk has a chance to do anything.
- "When the butter is quite hot"Hot but not browning. Once the butter foam subsides and before it colours is the moment; browned butter in this dish reads as scorched rather than nutty.
- The silver forkSilver was probably specified because tin and iron were held to discolour eggs, though sulphur in eggs tarnishes silver in return. A silicone spatula does the job better, scraping the base as well as stirring.
- Judging donenessPull the pan off the heat while the eggs still look slightly underdone and glossy. Carryover heat in the blazer pan finishes them in the time it takes to reach the toast.
- YieldTwo modest servings on toast, or one substantial one. Chafing-dish dishes were often associated with late suppers and after-theatre eating, though the pan was put to breakfast use as well.
The chafing dish had a genuine vogue in American homes from the 1890s through the 1910s, and cookbooks of the era gave it a section of its own. A spirit lamp under a shallow pan let a hostess cook at the table without servants and without the kitchen range, which suited late suppers, college rooms and the sort of informal entertaining that was newly fashionable. The repertoire was narrow and repetitive by necessity: eggs, oysters, creamed shellfish, Welsh rarebit, anything that cooked quickly over gentle heat and could be eaten straight from the pan. Stirred eggs on toast is the plainest thing in the category, and its presence here is a reminder that the chafing dish was as much a social object as a cooking one.