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Scrambled Eggs, Molet
Plunge twelve fresh eggs in boiling water for five minutes, lift up, clip off a piece of shell at end of each and with a very small spoon scoop insides into a frying pan; add an ounce butter, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper, a half gill cream, place pan on fire and gently cook for two minutes, continually stirring meanwhile; dress on a deep dish and serve.
This is not a plain scramble but a two-stage one: the eggs are part-set in the shell first, then finished in butter and cream. The five-minute boil is the whole point, and everything else depends on getting it right.
- The hinge: the five minutesFive minutes in boiling water gives œufs mollets — white just set, yolk still liquid. Twelve cold eggs will drop the water temperature sharply, so bring them to room temperature first and use a large pot of hard-boiling water so it recovers quickly. Overshoot and the yolks firm up, and you will be scrambling lumps rather than a custard.
- Scooping the shellsCrack a piece off the wide end and scoop with a demitasse or espresso spoon, which fits the curve. Work over a bowl rather than straight into the pan so you can catch shell fragments, and expect a little set white to cling to the shell.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup, about 60 ml. Heavy or light cream both work; the cream is there to slow the coagulation and keep the mixture loose.
- An ounce of butterTwo tablespoons, roughly 30 g, for twelve eggs. Melt it and let the pan settle to a gentle heat before the eggs go in.
- Two saltspoons pepperA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so this is half a teaspoon of pepper — assertive by modern standards for twelve eggs. Start with a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground white or black pepper and adjust at the end.
- Two minutes, and no moreThe eggs arrive in the pan already half cooked, so the finishing time really is short. Keep the heat low to moderate, stir without stopping, and pull the pan while the mixture still looks slightly wetter than you want; it carries on setting in the warm dish.
- The dish"Dress on a deep dish" means a dish with sides rather than a flat platter, which keeps the eggs from spreading out and cooling. Warming it first is not in the recipe but helps.
- YieldTwelve eggs serves six as a breakfast or luncheon dish, four if it is the centre of the plate. Halving works, but keep the same generous pot of water for the boil.
Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) collects dishes from the hotel and restaurant kitchens he knew from his years at Delmonico's, and "molet" here is presumably the French mollet — the soft-boiled egg whose white has set while the yolk stays fluid. Part-cooking the eggs in the shell gives the finished dish a mixture of firm curd and loose yolk that stirring a raw egg will not produce, and it would let a cook part-cook a dozen eggs ahead and finish them quickly. The half gill of cream and the deep dish both point toward a loose, spoonable scramble.