Stuffed Eggs
Cut in two, hard-boiled eggs, remove yolks, chop, and mix with them chopped cold chicken, lamb, or veal (some add a little minced onion or parsley and a few soaked bread-crumbs), season, and add gravy or the uncooked yolk of an egg, form, fill in the cavities, level, put the two halves together, roll in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, put in wire egg-basket, and dip in boiling lard; when slightly brown, serve with celery or tomato sauce To KEEP EGGS.
Put a two inch layer of salt in bottom of stone jar, then a layer of fresh eggs, small end down; then salt, then eggs, and so on till jar is full, with a layer of salt at top; cover and put in a cool place, but not where they will freeze. This is a simple, easy, and inexpensive way, and has been tested for years. Or, dip the eggs in melted wax, or a weak solution of gum, or in flax-seed oil, or rub over simply with lard, each of which renders the shell impervious to air, and pack away in oats or bran. For one's own use the latter is a good method, keeping the eggs perfectly, but it discolors the shells, and renders them unfit for market.
There has always existed a great difference of opinion as to which end down eggs should be placed in packing for winter use. W. H. Todd, the well known Ohio breeder of poultry, gives what seems to be a sound reason for packing them larger end down. He says: "The air-chamber is in the larger end, and if that is placed down the yolk will not break through and touch the shell, and thereby spoil. Another thing, if the air-chamber is down, the egg is not as liable to shrink away. These are two important reasons deducted from experiments, and they materially affect the keeping of eggs."
A frying recipe rather than a picnic deviled egg: the halves are stuffed, reassembled, breaded and dropped into hot fat. Everything depends on the egg staying shut.
- The hinge: seal before fryingPack the filling firmly, press the halves together, and give them a full coating of beaten egg and crumbs; chill the assembled eggs 20-30 minutes so the coating sets. A loose or warm egg splits in the fat and the filling boils out.
- "Dip in boiling lard"Lard does not boil at frying heat; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble around food, roughly 350-375F. Deeper than the eggs are tall, and only a few at a time so the temperature holds.
- Wire egg-basketA wire basket used to lower the eggs into the fat; the recipe does not describe its form. A small fine-mesh frying basket, spider, or slotted spoon does the same job; the point is lowering and lifting them without handling.
- The binderThe recipe allows either gravy or an uncooked yolk; gravy gives a looser mixture, the yolk a firmer one that sets as it cooks. Use only enough to make the mixture hold when squeezed.
- The cold meatThis is a leftovers dish, written for households with roast chicken, lamb, or veal to use up. Meat more than two days old, or held unrefrigerated as it often was in 1883, should not go into it; the brief fry only browns the outside.
- Seasoning'season' here means at least salt and pepper; nutmeg or mace was a common addition to veal and chicken forcemeats of the period, though this recipe does not call for it. Mustard and cayenne suit it as well, and move the flavour toward what we now call deviled.
- Celery sauceIn this period a white sauce flavoured with celery and strained, rather than a modern cream-of-celery. Tomato sauce was generally a cooked tomato puree, often thickened with a little roux.
- YieldSix eggs give twelve halves and reassemble into six stuffed eggs, enough for three or four as a lunch or supper dish with sauce.
- The appended egg-keeping notesThe salt-jar, wax, and flaxseed-oil methods that follow belong to an unrefrigerated household and were meant to hold eggs for months. They are not a reliable preservation method by current standards; use refrigeration.
Stuffed eggs of this kind sit between two traditions: the French oeufs farcis, where the yolk is worked with cold meat or fish and returned to the white, and the English "deviled" egg seasoned hot with mustard and pepper. What marks this version as a nineteenth-century American household recipe is the frying and the frugality. It is built around cold roast chicken, lamb, or veal, with soaked breadcrumbs to stretch the filling further, and it turns a plate of remnants into a dish worth serving with a made sauce. The Dixie Cook Book, like the Buckeye books it was closely related to, was assembled from contributed household receipts, which explains the abrupt shift mid-entry into egg preservation and a poultry breeder's opinion on which end of an egg should face down. Eggs were seasonal, cheap in spring and scarce in winter, and a book of this sort was expected to cover both how to cook them and how to hoard them.