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Scrambled Eggs, Grand Pere
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill milk, season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, half teaspoon freshly chopped tarragon, and half teaspoon freshly chopped chervil. Beat up with a fork for one minute. Heat two tablespoons butter in a frying pan, adding one ounce lean, raw bacon cut into small dice pieces, half a finely chopped onion and one slice of sandwich bread cut into pieces a quarter-inch square, and let briskly cook for eight minutes or until of a light brown; then drop in the eggs, mix with a wooden spoon and cook for six minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Pour into a hot, deep dish and serve.
A French-style scramble built on a base of bacon, onion and bread cubes fried in butter — closer to a peasant supper dish than to breakfast eggs. Two of the measurements are archaic and the timings assume a coal range.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons — a modest amount for eight eggs, which is what keeps the curd from going watery.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon, which is assertive but correct for this dish.
- The hinge: heat controlSix minutes of stirring only works over low heat. On a modern burner set to medium the eggs will be dry and grainy in two; keep the pan low and pull it off while the mass still looks slightly underdone.
- Eight minutes on the garnishThat is for bacon, onion and bread together in butter. Watch the bread rather than the clock — the cubes brown well before the onion softens, so start the bacon and onion first if your pan runs hot.
- Raw lean baconOne ounce is roughly one thick slice. "Raw" simply means uncooked going into the pan, and "lean" points away from a fatty cut; a fatty modern streaky bacon will render enough grease to make the two tablespoons of butter excessive, so cut the butter back.
- Sandwich breadAt the time this meant a close-crumbed white loaf, cut thin. Firm white sandwich bread, slightly stale, gives the quarter-inch dice the recipe wants; airy modern loaves collapse in the butter.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh and it fades fast when dried. Flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of extra tarragon is the usual substitution, though it loses the faint anise note chervil contributes.
- YieldEight eggs serves four generously as a supper dish, six if it follows soup. The hot deep dish matters — a cold platter drops the temperature immediately and the eggs continue to weep.
The pairing of tarragon and chervil here is half of the classic fines herbes quartet (parsley and chives complete it). The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reflects that background: recipes written in the sequence a line cook would follow, with weights in ounces and the herbs assumed to be at hand. The instruction to fry the bread and bacon before the eggs go in, rather than folding them through at the end, is what separates this from a garnished scramble — the butter carries the bacon fat and browned bread flavour into the whole dish.