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Scrambled Eggs with Rice
Place an ounce of rice in a small saucepan with two gills milk, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper, lightly mix, boil for thirty-five minutes and keep hot. Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, season with teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, then briskly beat up with fork one minute. Heat a tablespoon of melted butter in sautoire, drop in the eggs, then cook six minutes, frequently stirring at the bottom once in a while, then add the rice, gently mix, pour in a deep dish and serve.
A plain supper dish written in the clipped, quantity-per-line style of a professional chef's manual. The measurements are all in units that have fallen out of use, and the rice needs more attention than the instruction suggests.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of milk is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: two saltspoons of salt is half a teaspoon, one saltspoon of pepper a quarter teaspoon.
- An ounce of riceOne ounce by weight is roughly 2 to 2½ tablespoons of raw long or medium grain rice. That is a small amount for a cup of milk, and the long simmer suggests the grains are meant to end up soft rather than separate and fluffy.
- Milk scorchesThirty-five minutes of rice simmering in milk will catch on the bottom of a thin pan. Use the lowest heat with a heavy saucepan, stir often, or cook it in a bowl set over simmering water and forget the timing anxiety.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan. Any wide, heavy-bottomed skillet works; nonstick makes the eggs easier to move.
- Six minutes is not a mistakeModern habit is to scramble eggs fast and hot. Six minutes with frequent stirring from the bottom implies moderate heat, and the eggs come out in small soft curds rather than sheets. Pull the pan while they still look slightly underdone, since they set further off the heat.
- Season with a lighter handA full teaspoon of salt plus half a teaspoon of white pepper for eight eggs is heavy by current taste, and the rice is already salted. Start with half and correct at the end.
- YieldEight eggs and the rice make four generous servings, or six alongside toast and something cured.
The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like what it is: a professional's index of dishes, thousands of them, each compressed into a single paragraph with weights and saltspoon measures rather than the chatty tone of a domestic manual. Eggs scrambled with rice belongs to the large family of hotel and restaurant egg preparations that filled the breakfast and supper cards of the period, where a kitchen might list many variations distinguished only by what was folded in at the last moment. Cooking the rice in milk rather than water is the detail that gives the dish its character — it is closer to a savoury rice pudding than to a pilaf, and the soft grains disappear into the curds.