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Eggs, Mrs. Drapper
Peel three sound, medium, fresh red tomatoes, then cut them in small pieces and place them in a small saucepan with half an ounce butter, half a teaspoon salt, three saltspoons sugar and a saltspoon white pepper; mix well and let cook eight minutes. Knead on saucer a half ounce butter with a light teaspoon of flour and add to the tomatoes. Sharply mix until well thickened. Cut eight hard-boiled eggs in thin slices. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Lightly butter a baking dish, pour in half a gill very thick cream, then arrange a third of the eggs over, half of the tomatoes well spread over, then sprinkle a tablespoon of grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese over the tomatoes, then another third of the eggs, the balance of the tomatoes over the eggs, then the rest of the eggs, pour over half a gill of cream, sprinkle another tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, arrange a few little bits of butter on top, set in the oven ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A layered baked dish of sliced hard-boiled eggs, thickened tomato and cream, finished with cheese. Everything is cooked before it goes into the dish, so the oven's only job is to heat it through and brown the top.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of sugar is about 3/4 teaspoon and one saltspoon of pepper a scant 1/4 teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, making each of the two cream additions 1/4 cup.
- Butter by weightHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. You need two of these portions: one to stew the tomatoes, one kneaded with flour.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual in books of this date. Around 400F for the ten minutes stated will heat the layers and colour the cheese; the eggs are already cooked and long baking will only make them squeak and weep.
- The kneaded butterButter worked with flour on a saucer is beurre manié. It must be stirred in off a hard boil and beaten sharply so no raw flour lumps survive, and the tomato should be thick enough to sit in a layer rather than run to the bottom of the dish.
- Peeling the tomatoesThree medium tomatoes peel most easily after ten seconds in boiling water and a plunge into cold. Skins left on will curl into leathery strips in the finished dish.
This is one of hundreds of dishes in Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906) carrying a proper name in place of a description. Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the convention there u2014 as in the grand French kitchens the restaurant modelled itself on u2014 was to attach a patron's or a colleague's name to a preparation, which is how menus came to be full of dishes u00e0 la someone. Eggs were a particularly fertile field for this, since a cook with hard-boiled eggs, a sauce and a cheese crust could ring dozens of small changes and give each one a different label. The dish itself belongs to a broad family of baked egg gratins that filled out the lighter courses of a long menu and, in domestic use, made a substantial supper from modest ingredients.