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Scrambled Eggs with Green Peppers
Crack eight fresh eggs into a bowl, add a half gill milk, season with half teaspoon salt and sharply beat up with fork for a minute. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, drop in a very finely chopped green pepper and brown it for six minutes; drop in the eggs and cook for six minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A plain 1910 breakfast dish, and the only thing standing between it and a good plate of eggs is the cooking time.
- The hinge: six minutes is too longEight eggs over moderate heat will set into a dry, weeping curd in six minutes. Pull the pan off the heat while the eggs are still visibly loose and glossy, usually two to three minutes of gentle stirring, and let carryover heat finish them.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. That is a generous amount of liquid for eight eggs; 2 tablespoons gives a softer curd with less risk of separating.
- Green pepperA single bell pepper, seeded and chopped fine. Browning it for six minutes in a tablespoon of butter is right — it drives off raw-vegetable harshness and some moisture — but watch the butter and add a little oil if it threatens to scorch.
- Pan and heatUse a nonstick or well-seasoned skillet over medium-low. One tablespoon of butter for eight eggs is thin by modern standards; two makes the eggs release cleanly.
- Salt timingHalf a teaspoon for eight eggs is about right. Salting in the bowl and letting the mixture stand a few minutes gives a slightly more tender result than salting in the pan.
- YieldEight eggs serves four generously, three if it is the centre of the meal. "Dress on a hot dish" means warm the serving plate — cold china pulls the heat straight out of soft eggs.
Sweet peppers appear in American cookbooks of this period most often in association with Spanish, Mexican and Creole dishes, and were more familiar in the South and Southwest than in the Northeast. The technique here, browning the pepper first and then pouring eggs over it, resembles the logic behind Basque piperade and other Spanish egg dishes, though this version has no tomato, onion or garlic. The instruction to beat the eggs "sharply" with a fork for a minute suggests a preference for a uniform, close-textured scramble rather than the large soft curds now in fashion.