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Brown-Bread Relish
Put a little bacon fat in a frying-pan. When it is hot add any cut slices of Boston brown bread and brown carefully. Slip a poached egg on each slice and serve hot.
Bird's-nest Toast (for an Invalid) Cut a slice of stale bread in a large circle. Toast it carefully over a slow fire until a delicate brown. Dip the edges very quickly in hot salted water and put it on a hot baking-tin, where it will keep warm. Butter it if butter is allowed. Separate a perfectly fresh egg. Add a little salt to the white and beat to a stiff froth. Pile this on the toast, make a depression in the center, into which carefully slip the yolk. Heat in the oven just enough to "set" the yolk, and serve it on a warm plate.
Two quick uses for stale bread, both built around an egg. Neither needs much translation, but a few details in the original assume a coal range and a cook standing over it.
- Boston brown breadA steamed, molasses-sweetened loaf, usually rye and cornmeal (often with some whole-wheat flour), dense and damp, traditionally steamed in a cylindrical tin or can. Canned versions are still sold in New England; a bakery date-nut or pumpernickel loaf will fry similarly if you cannot find it.
- Bacon fat, and how much"A little" means enough to film the pan. Brown bread is sweet and scorches faster than white, so keep the pan at medium and turn once the cut face is glossy and dark.
- Slow fire for the toastThe invalid's toast is meant to dry through as it colors, so use low, even heat rather than a broiler. Under a broiler you get a brown surface over a soft interior, which is exactly what the recipe is trying to avoid.
- The dip in salted waterPresumably to soften the crust edges so the toast is easier to eat and less likely to shatter. "Very quickly" suggests no more than a moment; longer and the round goes limp.
- Oven for setting the yolkNo temperature is given. Use 350F and watch it closely; the yolk needs only to firm at the surface.
- Egg safetyBoth dishes leave the yolk soft, and the second was intended for someone already ill. Anyone feeding a young child, an older or immune-compromised person should use pasteurized eggs or cook the yolk through.
- YieldOne slice and one egg per serving in both cases. Neither holds; assemble and serve immediately, as the whipped white on the toast begins to weep within a few minutes.
Both of these belong to the frugal-but-genteel tradition that produced the whole genre of "left over" cookery around the turn of the twentieth century, when stale bread was assumed to appear daily in any household and wasting it was a moral failing as much as an economic one. Boston brown bread itself is older, a steamed loaf born of a New England pantry stocked with rye and cornmeal rather than much wheat flour, and molasses rather than sugar. The second dish belongs to invalid cookery, a standard chapter in books of this period: sickroom food was a domestic duty, and recipes for it prize pale colors, soft textures and the appearance of daintiness on a warmed plate. The name "bird's-nest" for a whipped white with the yolk dropped into a hollow is a descriptive one; the same construction, sweetened, becomes a meringue-topped dessert.