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Scrambled Eggs
Beat up four eggs and add a pinch of salt. Put into a saucepan two ounces of butter; pour in the eggs, and stir briskly over a quick fire for one minute. Toast and butter some slices of bread, put them on a dish, pour the eggs over, and serve very hot.
A four-line recipe with two decisions hidden in it: how much butter, and how fast. Both are worth thinking about before the pan goes on.
- Two ounces of butter is not a misprintThat is 4 tablespoons for four eggs — roughly a tablespoon per egg, which by modern standards is generous but produces the loose, glossy result the period wanted. Halve it if you like; the eggs will be firmer and less rich.
- "A quick fire" means high heatOscar's method is the fast one: hot pan, constant stirring, done in a minute. It works, but it leaves almost no margin — the curds set in seconds and go dry a few seconds later. Pull the pan while the eggs still look slightly underdone, since they keep cooking off the heat.
- Or take the slow roadThe alternative, often preferred now, is low heat with continuous stirring for five to eight minutes, which gives small, creamy curds. Same ingredients, entirely different texture. The recipe as written commits you to the brisk version.
- Don't beat them too far"Beat up four eggs" — a few strokes with a fork until the yolks break and streak is enough. Beating to a uniform pale foam incorporates air that collapses in the pan and gives a slightly spongy set.
- Salt timingThe pinch of salt goes in with the eggs here. Salting well in advance loosens the proteins and gives a softer curd; salting at the very last moment keeps them tighter. Either is defensible, but adding it to the raw eggs and cooking immediately, as written, is the middle course.
- The toast is structuralButtered toast underneath is not garnish — it absorbs the butter and any liquid the eggs throw off, which is why the dish holds together on the plate. Toast it while the pan heats and butter it hot.
- YieldFour eggs serves two as a breakfast dish, one as a substantial one. Scale by adding eggs and butter in the same ratio, but do not crowd the pan; a large quantity of egg over high heat will cook unevenly.
Oscar Tschirky was never a chef — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, the man in the dining room — but his 1896 Cook Book ran to nearly a thousand pages and gathered everything a large hotel kitchen might be asked for, from terrapin to this. Scrambled eggs on buttered toast belongs to the plainest end of that range: the sort of thing sent up for breakfast, for a light supper, or to a guest who wanted nothing elaborate. The instruction to stir "over a quick fire for one minute" reflects a coal or gas range where heat was managed by moving the pan rather than turning a dial, and where a cook working a busy service had no minutes to spare. The hotel version is fast, buttery, and served very hot, which the recipe takes care to specify.