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Scrambled Eggs with Truffles
Put into a saucepan four sliced truffles with one wineglassful of Madeira wine and reduce to about half its original bulk, which will take about two minutes; add a tablespoonful of butter, and season with salt and pepper. Break eight eggs into the saucepan, and mix well with a wooden spoon or knife for three minutes over a quick fire without ceasing. Serve in a hot dish.
A late-nineteenth-century luxury breakfast dish, written for a cook who already knew how eggs behave. Two things need translating: the wineglass, and the fire.
- A wineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is generally reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Reduced by half it leaves roughly two tablespoons of syrupy Madeira, which is the point — the wine is a seasoning, not a sauce.
- Which MadeiraUse a dry to medium style, Sercial or Verdelho, rather than a sweet Malmsey or the salted "cooking Madeira" sold in supermarkets. The reduction concentrates whatever sugar and salt is in the bottle.
- TrufflesThe recipe specifies only "four sliced truffles"; black winter truffles are the likely intent, though truffles reaching American kitchens at this date were often imported preserved rather than fresh. Preserved truffles in jars are the realistic substitute and will want a slightly shorter time in the wine; truffle oil is a different product altogether and should be added off the heat if at all.
- "A quick fire" is the sticking pointThree minutes of hard scrambling over high heat gives the firm, small-curded eggs of a hotel breakfast service. Modern practice favours medium-low heat and a longer stir for a softer curd — either works, but a quick fire needs constant motion and the pan pulled off before the eggs look finished.
- Butter and panOne tablespoon for eight eggs is lean by current standards. A well-seasoned or nonstick pan helps; in a bare stainless pan add another tablespoon or the eggs will grip.
- Season early, and lightlyThe salt goes in with the butter, before the eggs, so it dissolves into the wine reduction. Go easy — the Madeira has already concentrated.
- YieldEight eggs serves four as a breakfast or supper dish, or six alongside toast and something else.
Oscar Tschirky was not a chef — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 collection reads like a record of what the dining room actually sent out rather than a training manual. Scrambled eggs with truffles belongs to the hotel breakfast and after-theatre supper repertoire, where an egg dish was a way to serve something expensive without serving something heavy; truffles and Madeira between them signal French technique and money, both of which the Waldorf traded on. Madeira held a particular place in nineteenth-century American cooking, long favoured in the eastern seaboard trade and used freely in savoury reductions where a modern kitchen might reach for sherry or port. The instruction to stir with a wooden spoon or knife, and never to stop, is the whole of the method: everything else in the recipe is shopping.