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Scrambled Eggs with Celery
Cut four branches of the perfect white of celery into very small dice pieces, wash and drain well, then place in a saucepan with a pint cold water and two saltspoons salt and let boil for twenty minutes. Remove and drain well. Break eight fresh eggs in a bowl, season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, pour in half gill fresh milk. Sharply beat up the whole together for half minute. Heat a tablespoon butter in a saucepan, drop in the eggs and celery, thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon while cooking for six minutes. Dress on a hot, deep dish and serve.
A straightforward scramble whose only real trick is getting the celery soft and dry before it meets the eggs. The measurements are Escoffier-era hotel shorthand.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so "two saltspoons salt" in the celery water is roughly 1/2 teaspoon and the white pepper likewise. Half a gill is 1/4 cup of milk for eight eggs, which is generous but produces a soft curd.
- Celery quantity"Four branches" means four ribs from the pale inner heart, not four whole heads. Expect about a cup of small dice.
- Twenty minutes is not a mistakeDiced celery boiled that long loses its raw snap and stringiness entirely, which is the point here; it is meant to disappear into the eggs rather than sit in them. Drain it thoroughly and blot it, or the water will thin the curd.
- Six minutes over low heatThe original does not say to keep the heat gentle, but it must be gentle for eggs to take six minutes without setting hard. Use the lowest flame that still moves the eggs and stir constantly with the wooden spoon; pull the pan while the mass still looks slightly underdone.
- ButterOne tablespoon for eight eggs is lean by modern habit. Two, or a nonstick pan, will save you scraping.
- YieldEight eggs serves four as a light lunch or breakfast course, three if it is the main dish. The "hot, deep dish" matters: a cold platter drops the temperature immediately and a shallow one lets the eggs spread and cool.
Scrambled eggs with a cooked vegetable folded through belongs to the long French repertoire of oeufs brouill\u the kitchen had at hand — tomato, mushroom, asparagus tips, truffle, celery. Books of this type, compiled in the era of the great international hotel kitchens, treat the plain scramble as a base formula and then run through variations, which is why the celery here is boiled separately in salted water as if it were destined for a garnish plate. Celery itself was a considerably more prestigious vegetable in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than it is now, sold blanched pale in tall glass celery vases for the table — and this recipe calls for "the perfect white," the tender inner heart.