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Deviled Eggs
Boil a sufficient quantity of eggs hard; when cold, peel and dip the first into beaten raw egg, next into oil, and roll them in salt and a small quantity of cayenne. Make a little tray by twisting up the corners of half a sheet of oiled writing paper, place the eggs in it, put on a gridiron over a clear fire, and shake it about until the eggs are quite hot. Meanwhile prepare equal quantities of olive oil and chutney sauce, pour the sauce around them, garnish with parsley, and serve.
This is devilling in the older British sense — hard eggs coated in spice and heated over a fire — not the halved-and-stuffed picnic egg the name suggests today. Two things decide whether it works: a coating that actually adheres, and heat brisk enough to warm the eggs without scorching the paper.
- Not stuffed eggsThe eggs stay whole. Nothing is scooped out, nothing is piped back in. The dish is served hot, with sauce poured around.
- The coating sequenceBeaten raw egg first, then oil, then the salt and cayenne. The egg wash is the glue; if the peeled eggs are at all damp the seasoning slides off, so blot them dry before dipping.
- Cayenne quantity"A small quantity" is doing real work here. Devilled meant fiercely hot in 1896; a scant quarter teaspoon of cayenne to a tablespoon of salt is assertive without being punishing, and you can push it from there.
- The paper trayOiled writing paper was the period's disposable pan. Use parchment, twist the corners into a shallow tray, and keep it well back from any open flame — parchment browns and can catch at direct high heat. A small heavy skillet or a foil tray does the same job with less drama.
- Gridiron over a clear fireA "clear fire" is coals burned down past smoking and flame. The modern equivalent is a grill over settled coals, or a heavy pan over medium heat, shaking constantly. The eggs only need to be heated through and the coating set — three or four minutes, not longer, or the whites toughen and turn leathery.
- The egg washThe raw egg coating sets as the eggs heat through. Keep the eggs moving and make sure the surface looks dry and opaque rather than glossy before serving; a coating that never sets is simply raw egg.
- Chutney sauceMost likely a bottled Indian-style chutney -- mango, vinegar, sugar, ginger -- though the recipe specifies nothing beyond "chutney sauce." Equal parts by volume with olive oil, whisked or briefly warmed together; chop any large fruit pieces so the sauce pours. It will separate on standing, so whisk again just before it goes round the plate.
- YieldFigure two eggs per person as a first course or savoury, one as part of a larger breakfast.
To devil a food in nineteenth-century British and Anglo-Indian cookery meant to dress it with hot condiments ey — cayenne, mustard, chutney — and usually to grill it; devilled kidneys, devilled bones and devilled biscuits all belong to the same family, and the term is generally traced to the late eighteenth century as a joke about infernal heat. That chutney is the finishing sauce here suggests the dish belongs to the Anglo-Indian line. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms and put his name to this 1896 collection, was assembling exactly that sort of cosmopolitan repertoire for a clientele that expected European and colonial dishes alongside American ones. The stuffed halved egg that now owns the name "deviled egg" was already in circulation by then, but it is a separate line of descent, and Oscar's version shows how loosely the word still attached to any egg treated with pepper.