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Scrambled Eggs, Schmidt
Cut from a stale sandwich loaf six slices a quarter of an inch thick, toast to a nice golden colour, trim to two-inch-square pieces and spread a teaspoon pate de foie on top of each toast, arrange on a hot dish. carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper. Sharply beat up with a fork for one minute, heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, drop in the eggs and cook for six minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Evenly arrange them over the toasts and send to the table.
A straightforward plate of soft scrambled eggs served on foie gras toasts. The only real technique question is heat control, and the original gives a time rather than a temperature.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup (60 ml) for eight eggs. That is a generous amount and will give a loose, custardy scramble.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is a scant 3/4 teaspoon of white pepper. That is aggressive by current taste; a quarter to a half teaspoon suits most palates, and the pepper should not overwhelm the pâté.
- Six minutes means low heatEight eggs will set in under two minutes in a hot pan. The six-minute instruction only makes sense over gentle heat with near-constant stirring, which is how you get small curds and a creamy texture. Pull the pan while the eggs still look slightly underdone; they carry over.
- A tablespoon of butterOne tablespoon for eight eggs is thin coverage in a modern thin-bottomed pan. Two tablespoons in a heavy skillet, or a nonstick pan, gets you there without sticking.
- Pâté de foieP tâté de foie — In 1906 this generally meant goose or duck liver pâté, often the imported tinned French product. Any smooth liver pâté or mousse works; a teaspoon spread on a two-inch square is a thick layer, so scale to taste. Spread it on toast that has cooled slightly or it will melt and run.
- Stale sandwich loafThe recipe gives no reason, but day-old bread cuts cleanly at a quarter inch and toasts without drying to a cracker. A firm white pullman loaf is the closest modern equivalent.
- YieldEight eggs and six toasts serve three to four as a breakfast or light supper dish. The toasts are meant to be arranged on one hot platter and the eggs spooned over, not plated individually.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906). Filippini spent decades as a chef and manager at Delmonico's in New York, and his books are full of dishes carrying a surname u2014 Schmidt, Bernhardt, Rossini u2014 a restaurant convention for recording a variation associated with a particular person, whether a patron, a colleague or a public figure of the day. The person behind this one is not identified in the book, and the trail is generally cold for most such names. What the recipe does show plainly is the Gilded Age habit of lifting a plain dish into the luxury column with a single expensive ingredient: eggs on toast become a hotel dish the moment tinned foie gras goes between them. The same logic gave the period its truffled omelettes and its Rossini garnish.