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Scrambled Eggs, Mccook
Break eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a gill cream, half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne, half saltspoon grated nutmeg, and beat up with fork for one minute. Finely chop a truffle, place in a sautoir with a tablespoon melted butter and heat for two minutes. Drop in eggs and cook for six minutes, briskly stirring quite frequently meanwhile, pour in a tablespoon sherry and mix well. Broil six very thin slices ham for two minutes on each side, arrange on a hot dish, evenly divide scrambled eggs over, arrange six heart shaped bread croutons around and serve.
A Delmonico-style scramble: rich, softly set, and finished with sherry. The measurements are all pre-standard, and the six-minute cooking time only works over gentle heat.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz) of cream. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the cayenne is 1/4 tsp and the nutmeg 1/8 tsp — the cayenne is assertive at that level with eight eggs.
- SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, not a sloped skillet. Any wide, heavy-bottomed pan works; a nonstick or well-seasoned surface saves grief with a cream-loaded scramble.
- Heat is the hingeSix minutes with frequent brisk stirring only produces a creamy curd over low heat. On medium the eggs will set in two minutes and weep. Keep the pan cool enough that the mass thickens slowly, and pull it while still slightly loose — carryover heat finishes it on the hot dish.
- The truffleThe recipe specifies only 'a truffle'; a tinned or jarred one is the practical substitute today, and preserved truffles were common in period American kitchens. The two minutes in butter serves to carry its aroma into the fat. Truffle oil is not an equivalent and will read as chemical against the cream.
- Sherry at the endAdded off-boil at the finish, so it stays perfumed rather than cooking off. Use a dry amontillado or fino; cream sherry will push an already rich dish into sweetness.
- Broiling the hamTwo minutes a side under a modern broiler will overcook thin slices of today's wet-cured ham. Watch it — you want the edges just curling and browned, not crisp.
- CroutonsHeart-shaped bread croutons are typically slices of crustless bread cut with a cutter and fried until golden, then drained; the recipe does not specify the fat or how they are turned. They serve as garnish and as a scoop, arranged around the rim.
- YieldThe six slices of ham and six croutons, with the eggs evenly divided over them, imply six portions; served as a main course it will stretch less far.
The name follows the house convention of The International Cook Book (1906), whose author Alexander Filippini spent decades in the Delmonico's kitchens in New York and named many dishes after patrons, public men and passing occasions — the surname is a dedication, not a description of a technique. What the recipe does document precisely is what a luxury American scramble looked like at the turn of the century: heavy cream rather than milk, truffle bought by the piece rather than shaved from a jar, a spoonful of sherry as the finishing perfume, and the whole thing plated on broiled ham and framed with fried croutons.