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Eggs, Virginia
Boil two peeled, sound, small potatoes for thirty minutes in a pint water with half teaspoon salt. Drain and press through a sieve into a bowl, adding a gill cream, two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon grated nutmeg and a teaspoon fresh butter; thoroughly mix with a spoon. Lightly butter the exterior of six paper cases, lay them on a tin. Divide the puree evenly into six cases, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each case, spread a tablespoon of hot tomato sauce over each case. Set them in the oven to bake for six minutes. Remove, dress them on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with parsley greens and serve.
A baked egg dish built on a potato purée base, in the manner of French oeufs sur le plat. Two details need correcting before it works: the oven is never named, and six minutes will not set twelve eggs.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, which was common in cookbooks of this period. Bake at about 375F; hotter than that and the whites toughen before the yolks warm through.
- The timing is the problemSix minutes leaves the whites translucent and slack. Expect 12 to 16 minutes at 375F for whites just set and yolks still soft, and judge by sight rather than the clock, since the depth of the potato purée under the eggs changes the rate.
- A gillHalf a cup. Add it gradually to the sieved potato; two small potatoes will not always absorb the full amount without going soupy.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. So half a teaspoon of salt in the purée plus a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg, on top of the salt already in the boiling water.
- Paper casesThese appear to be the stiff pleated paper cases once sold for baked entrees; buttering the outside would have helped keep them from scorching and sticking to the tin. Small ramekins or 4-inch foil cases do the same work, and are steadier under two eggs each.
- Sieving the potatoA ricer or food mill gives the smooth, dry purée intended here. A food processor turns boiled potato to glue.
- Tomato sauceUse it hot and thick. The recipe has it spread over the whole case; spooning it over the whites only and leaving the yolks bare gives more control over how far the yolks cook.
- YieldSix cases, two eggs apiece, twelve eggs in all. That serves six as a first course or lunch dish, not as a side.
- The folded napkinA standard service convention of the period; a napkin under the cases would also steady them on the platter and absorb any butter that leaked from them.
This belongs to the large family of hotel and restaurant egg dishes named after a place or person and distinguished by their garnish. Such names were the working shorthand of professional French-trained kitchens in America around the turn of the century, where a cook needed a single word to specify an entire set of accompaniments, and cookbooks of the period print them by the dozen with only the garnish changing. What exactly earns this one the name Virginia is not stated. Baking eggs in individual paper cases belongs to that same service culture. The potato base is a thrift as much as a flavor, stretching two eggs into a substantial portion while keeping them off the hot metal of the tin.