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Savory Cake
Beat four eggs, stir them with two heaped tablespoonfuls of flour, mix in one tablespoonful of minced chives and a little salt. Butter a shallow tin, pour in the cake mixture and bake it in a brisk oven until thoroughly browned.
This is a baked omelet in all but name: four eggs, two spoons of flour, chives, nothing more. The original assumes you know what a shallow tin and a brisk oven are, so those are the two things to pin down.
- "Brisk oven"Usually read as somewhere in the region of 400-425F. At that heat the batter should puff and brown in roughly a quarter of an hour; much cooler and it is likelier to set flat and pale, which defeats the point.
- The panA "shallow tin" here means something on the order of an 8- or 9-inch round or a small rectangular sheet, generously buttered. Depth matters more than shape: the mixture should sit no more than half an inch deep so it cooks through before the surface toughens.
- "Two heaped tablespoonfuls"Roughly 3 to 4 level tablespoons of flour. It is a binder, not a body; the recipe tells you to pour the mixture, so the batter should stay loose.
- Mixing orderBeat the eggs first, then add the flour, as the recipe directs, or it will lump. Whisk only until smooth.
- ChivesOne tablespoon minced means fresh chives, snipped fine. Dried chives contribute almost nothing here; if you have no fresh, use a mix of parsley and the green of a scallion rather than the jar.
- Doneness"Thoroughly browned" is the only cue given, and it is a good one: the top should be spotted deep gold and the centre set with no wobble. It will sink as it cools, which is normal.
- Yield and servingFour eggs feeds two as a light lunch or four cut into squares as a savory garnish alongside soup or roast meat. Serve it straight from the pan while it is still risen.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 cook book from the hotel's working kitchen and from the broader European repertoire its cooks had been trained in, which is why so many entries read like shorthand notes between professionals rather than instructions for a home cook. This one belongs to a large old family of egg dishes stiffened with a spoonful of flour and baked rather than turned in a pan ile@au four works on the same principle, and the flour exists only to hold the eggs together as they set. The chives may place it in the fines-herbes tradition, where the herb is often said to be chosen mild enough not to compete with the egg; chives were a standard kitchen-garden crop in the period. Calling it a "cake" seems to reflect an older, looser use of the word for anything baked flat in a tin, rather than the sweet, leavened sense that has since crowded the term out.