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Poached Eggs
Break as many eggs as you wish to use, one at a time, and drop carefully into a spider filled with boiling water. When the whites of the eggs are well set, slip a spoon carefully under and take out, laying each upon a small piece of buttered toast on the platter. Put a very small piece of butter on each egg, a slight dash of pepper, and serve immediately.
OMELET-(SPLENDID).
Six eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately; half pint milk, six teaspoons corn starch, one teaspoon of baking powder, and a little salt; add the whites, beaten to a stiff froth, last; cook in a little butter.
Two recipes have run together here — the poached eggs and, tacked onto the end without a break, a cornstarch-bound omelet. Treat them separately.
- A spiderOriginally a long-handled, legged skillet meant to stand over coals; by the 1870s the word simply meant a frying pan. For poaching, use a wide shallow pan — a 10-inch skillet holding water about two inches deep.
- Not actually boilingThe single change worth making. Bring the water to a boil, then drop the heat until it is barely trembling, around 180-190F. A rolling boil shreds the white before it sets and knocks the yolk loose.
- Fresher eggs, tighter whitesThe recipe likely assumes a very fresh egg, whose white is still thick enough to hold together. With supermarket eggs, break each into a cup first and slide it in at the surface; a teaspoon of vinegar in the water helps the outer white grab.
- How longThree minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk, four a jammy one. "Well set" whites in the original means firm and opaque, not rubbery — lift with a slotted spoon and drain on the toast.
- Half pint of milkOne cup. Six teaspoons of cornstarch is two tablespoons, and one teaspoon of baking powder is the modern measure unchanged, though period baking powders were generally single-acting and varied in strength.
- The omelet is really a puffed oneCornstarch, milk and baking powder with separately whipped whites make a soufflé omelet, not a French one. Fold the whites in with a light hand, cook covered over low heat until the base is set, then finish under the broiler or fold and serve at once — it deflates within a minute or two.
- YieldAllow two poached eggs per person. The omelet serves three, or two generously.
Poached eggs on buttered toast were breakfast-and-invalid food in equal measure through the nineteenth century — cheap, quick, and easily digested, which made them a standard dish for the sick and the delicate stomach alongside beef tea and gruel. The omelet is characteristic of the period's American cooking: cornstarch and baking powder were by then cheap and commercially available, and turn up freely in American recipes of a kind French practice would have left alone.