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Scrambled Eggs, Mrs. Hobart
Cut a round corner off the top of six round French rolls, scoop out soft part and lightly rub interior of each with a little anchovy butter. Lay rolls on a tin with covers and place in oven with door open until required. Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper and sharply beat up with fork for one minute. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in sautoire, add two Spanish sweet peppers cut in small squares and gently brown for five minutes, tossing meanwhile. Drop in eggs and cook for six minutes, briskly and frequently stirring. Place the six rolls on a hot dish, evenly divide eggs in them, place covers on, lightly glaze surface of covers with a little melted butter and serve.
A straightforward scramble served in hollowed rolls; the only tricky parts are the archaic measures and the wildly long cooking time for the eggs.
- The six-minute eggEight eggs with cream in a sauté pan over moderate heat will be firm and weeping long before six minutes. Cook over medium-low, stirring constantly, and pull the pan when the curds are still glossy and slightly looser than you want — two to three minutes is usually enough, and they finish in the hot rolls.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of cream is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon; two of them is a half teaspoon of pepper for eight eggs, which is assertive. A quarter teaspoon is closer to modern taste.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, not a deep pot. Any 10-inch skillet works; nonstick makes the scramble far easier to handle at low heat.
- Spanish sweet peppersProbably a sweet red pepper of the pimiento type; canned or jarred pimientos were common in American kitchens by this date, though the instruction to cut them in squares and brown them for five minutes suggests fresh peppers. If you use jarred pimientos, warm them only briefly in the butter; fresh red bell pepper will want the full five minutes to soften.
- Anchovy butterNot a shelf item now. Mash two or three oil-packed anchovy fillets, or a teaspoon of anchovy paste, into four tablespoons of softened butter. A thin smear inside each roll is the point — it seasons the crumb rather than announcing itself.
- Warming the rolls"in oven with door open until required" means holding them in a cooling oven so they stay warm without toasting. Use a 200F oven, covers on so the shells do not dry to crackers. Crusty French dinner rolls big enough to hold the filling work best; the scooped crumb makes good crumbs for another dish.
- YieldSix filled rolls, one per person as a lunch or supper dish, or two each for a light main course.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, filled his books with a great many dishes named after individuals, and most of those names are now unidentifiable — the dish outlived the diner. The form itself is older: eggs, creamed shellfish or salpicon served in a hollowed croustade of bread or pastry, which kept the filling hot, saved washing a dish, and let a kitchen turn out something that looked composed in the time it took to scramble eggs. Savory fish butters such as this anchovy butter were a familiar garnish in professional kitchens of the period.