Scrambled Eggs
In a deep earthen pie-plate, warm sweet milk, allowing two tablespoons to each egg (or less, with a large number of eggs), add a bit of butter size of a walnut, and a little salt and pepper. When nearly to boiling point drop in the eggs, broken one at a time in a saucer; with a spoon or thin-bladed knife gently cut the eggs, and scrape the mixture up from the bottom of the plate as it cooks. If it begins to cook dry and fast at the bottom, move the dish back instantly, for success depends wholly on cooking gently and evenly, proportions being of secondary importance. Take from stove before it has quite all thickened, and continue turning it up from bottom of dish a moment longer. If served in another dish (it keeps warmer served in same) have it well heated. The mixture should be in large flakes of mingled white and yellow, and as delicate as baked custard. Some prefer them scrambled without the milk. - Mrs. L. S. Williston, Jamestown, N. Y.
A late-nineteenth-century method that anticipates the modern low-and-slow scramble almost exactly. The one thing to change is the vessel.
- The hinge: gentle, uneven heatThe hinge: gentle, even heat -- Everything here rests on keeping the eggs below a hard simmer and pulling them from the heat while still slightly loose. Residual heat finishes the curd; if it looks done in the pan it will be dry on the plate.
- Use a skillet, not a pie-plate"A deep earthen pie-plate" set directly on a wood range would have buffered the fierce heat of the firebox, which may be why it is specified here. Modern glazed earthenware is not reliably safe on a gas burner or an electric coil, and will not sit on induction. A heavy nonstick or well-seasoned skillet over low heat gives the same slow, even conduction.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh milk, as opposed to the sour or buttermilk that appears constantly elsewhere in this book. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly a tablespoon, taking the walnut as shelled; period usage is not precise. Increase proportionally for a large batch.
- Two tablespoons milk per eggThat is generous by current practice and produces a soft, loose curd. Many cooks today use a tablespoon or less; the note "or less, with a large number of eggs" acknowledges the same thing.
- Breaking eggs into a saucerStandard precaution when eggs came from a hen house rather than a carton, so a bad one could be discarded without spoiling the batch. Still useful for catching shell fragments.
- "Move the dish back instantly"On a range, the back of the stovetop was the cool zone. Modern equivalent: lift the pan off the burner entirely for ten or fifteen seconds, then return it.
- YieldNot given. Two to three eggs per person is the usual allowance, so six eggs serves two to three at breakfast.
Scrambled eggs need no origin story, but the way this one is written tells you a good deal about cooking on a wood- or coal-fired range. There was no dial: heat was managed by moving the pan around the stovetop and by choosing a vessel that dulled the fire's edge, which may be part of why an earthen plate rather than iron is specified, and it is why the instruction is to shift the dish rather than turn anything down. The comparison to baked custard is a comparison of texture, though the two dishes do share a principle he prespresence of liquid. The Dixie Cook-Book, like the Buckeye books it grew out of, was assembled from contributions solicited from housekeepers by name and town, which is how a recipe credited to Jamestown, New York, comes to sit in a Southern collection.