No. 2940

Scrambled Eggs with Gravy

Œufs Brouilles au Jus

Break six eggs in a saucepan with two ounces of butter, a gill of cream or milk, and season with salt and pepper. Lay the saucepan containing the eggs on a slow fire and stir by beating vigorously with a small wire whip (Fig. 154); as soon as they attain a consistency, remove the saucepan from the fire and continue the same process for two minutes longer; when finished pour it out on a dish and surround by bread croutons (No. 51) fried in clarified butter. Throw over some reduced clear gravy (No. 404), mixing a little meat glaze (No. 402) into it.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's scrambled eggs are French in method: low heat, constant whisking, and the pan pulled off the fire before the eggs look done. The gravy is the only part that needs planning.

A gillIn American measure a gill is 4 fluid ounces, or half a cup, for six eggs. That is a generous amount of dairy and it is what keeps the curd soft; reduce it to a quarter cup if you want a firmer scramble.
Saucepan, not skilletThe eggs go into a saucepan, cold, with the butter and cream all at once. A heavy-bottomed pan and a heatproof rubber spatula work as well as the wire whip, and get into the corners better.
"A slow fire" is the hingeThe lowest burner setting you have, and the pan lifted off the heat whenever the eggs begin to set fast. The two minutes of off-heat stirring at the end is the whole technique: residual heat finishes the eggs while you keep the curd fine. Cook them to the point where they look done in the pan and they will be dry on the plate.
Reduced clear gravy and meat glazeNo. 404 is the book's clear meat gravy (jus), here reduced to a light sauce consistency; No. 402 is glace de viande, stock boiled down to a syrup. A good unsalted brown stock reduced hard, with a spoonful of demi-glace stirred in, does the same job. Season it lightly, since concentrated glaze carries a lot of salt.
CroutonsNo. 51 croutons are small shapes of crustless bread fried in clarified butter until just golden. Clarified butter matters here because the milk solids in whole butter burn at the temperature needed to crisp bread.
Order of workHave the gravy hot and the croutons fried and drained before the eggs go on the heat. Scrambled eggs held for even a couple of minutes tighten and weep.
YieldSix eggs serve three as a course on their own, or four if the dish is part of a larger meal.

A Little History

This is entry No. 2940 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium written after some three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York. The cross-referenced numbers are the book's defining feature: nearly every dish depends on a stock, garnish or glaze catalogued elsewhere, which is how a professional kitchen actually worked, with a saucier already holding reduced jus and meat glaze at the ready. Œufs brouillés au jus is a plain scramble dressed as a restaurant course by that borrowed sauce, and the very low heat with a wire whip is the French method that distinguishes brouillés from an American skillet scramble. Serving eggs under a meat gravy also reflects nineteenth-century menu logic, in which eggs appeared as an entrée among other savory dishes rather than as breakfast food alone.