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Petit Pains Au Scrambled Eggs
Cut the covers from six oval French breakfast rolls, scoop out the insides without disturbing the crusts; place on a dish and keep hot, with covers on the plate also. Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill milk, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Beat them up with a fork for one minute. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, drop in the eggs and cook for six minutes, briskly stirring meanwhile; then equally divide the eggs into the six rolls, place the covers on and serve.
A hotel breakfast dish that stands or falls on the eggs: soft curds in a warm crust. The measurements are of their period and the cooking time needs reading in context.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons — a quarter cup for eight eggs. That is a generous but workable ratio; less milk gives firmer curds that sit better in the bread.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper. Against half a teaspoon of salt that is a markedly peppery seasoning by current taste; scale back if you prefer.
- Six minutes of stirringThis only makes sense over gentle heat. Scrambled eggs cooked briskly for six minutes over a hot pan will weep and turn granular. Keep the pan at medium-low, stir constantly, and pull the eggs while they are still slightly looser than you want them — they carry on setting in the hot rolls.
- One tablespoon of butterThin coverage for eight eggs in a modern pan. Two tablespoons, or a nonstick surface, will keep the curds from catching.
- The rollsOval French breakfast rolls means small crusty rolls, not soft dinner rolls — the crust has to hold its shape once hollowed. Petits pains or small demi-baguette rolls work; a soft roll collapses under wet eggs.
- Keeping them hotThe recipe says only to put the shells on a dish and keep them hot, with the covers alongside; it names no oven or temperature. A very low oven will do it, and warming the shells also dries the cut interior slightly, which helps them stay crisp for the few minutes before serving.
- YieldSix filled rolls, one per person, as a breakfast or light supper dish. The scooped-out crumb is worth keeping for breadcrumbs.
Filippini's International Cook Book collects the repertoire of a large American restaurant kitchen — Filippini's career was at Delmonico's — at the turn of the twentieth century, and the half-French, half-English title here is a fair sample of how such menus were written: petit pain is simply a small bread roll, and the English tail of the name would have made the filling plain to English-speaking diners. Serving eggs, creamed mixtures or ragouts in a hollowed crust — a croustade — was a common way of turning a plain preparation into something plateable, and it appears in period restaurant and club cookery because it travels from kitchen to table without spilling and looks like more work than it is. The instruction to keep the shells and their covers hot on the dish is the professional detail: cold bread pulls the heat out of an egg dish quickly.