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Scrambled Eggs
Helena Smith.
Beat up six eggs with two ounces of butter, one tablespoonful of cream of new milk, a little chopped parsley, and salt; put all in a saucepan, and keep stirring over the fire until it begins to thicken, when it should be immediately dished on buttered toast.
A plain English scramble, richer in butter than most modern versions and finished the moment it thickens. The whole recipe turns on when you take it off the heat.
- Pull them earlyEggs continue to set from residual heat in the pan and again on the toast. "Begins to thicken" means still glossy and loose; dish them then rather than when they look done.
- Two ounces of butterThat is four tablespoons for six eggs — half a stick. It is not a misprint; the fat is what keeps the curd soft. Use less if you like, but the texture changes.
- "Cream of new milk"This may be a compositor's slip for "cream or new milk," though the phrase can also be read as the cream taken from new milk. New milk meant fresh, unskimmed milk straight from the cow, so either whole milk or cream answers. One tablespoon for six eggs either way.
- Heat and panLow heat and a heavy saucepan. A thin pan over a brisk flame will set the bottom layer into rubbery flecks before the rest has moved.
- Salt timingThe salt goes into the beaten eggs, as written. Modern kitchen testing suggests salting ahead of cooking can give a slightly more tender curd, though the recipe makes no such claim.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curled, chopped fine and added raw with the eggs. It will not cook long enough to soften, which is the point.
- YieldSix eggs serves three generously with toast, or four at a larger breakfast.
Scrambled eggs on buttered toast belong to the Victorian and Edwardian breakfast sideboard, where they sat alongside kidneys, bacon and fish as one of the cheaper hot dishes. The abundance of butter here is characteristic: in a period before eggs were a year-round supermarket staple, a dish of six was already a small extravagance, and cooks saw no reason to stint on the rest. The Home Cook Book, like many nineteenth-century community cookbooks, appears to credit each receipt to the woman who contributed it he attusual attribution here being to Helena Smith. The instruction to dish them "immediately" is the one piece of real technique in the entry, and it is the same advice given by cooks today.