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Scrambled Eggs with Shrimps
Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill milk, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Sharply beat with fork one minute. Shell twelve cooked shrimps and cut in third-of-an-inch pieces, place in a sauteuse with tablespoon melted butter and fry five minutes, tossing meanwhile. Sprinkle over two saltspoons salt and half teaspoon chopped parsley; lightly toss. Drop in the eggs and cook six minutes, briskly mixing occasionally. Dress on a hot dish. Arrange six heart-shaped bread croutons around the eggs and serve.
A straightforward eight-egg scramble from the era when hotel kitchens measured in gills and saltspoons. Two of the original timings need adjusting, and the salt should be checked before it goes in.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup (about 60 ml). That is a generous amount of liquid for eight eggs and will give a soft, loose curd rather than a firm one.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon, which is assertive but deliberate; two more saltspoons of salt over the shrimp brings the total to a full teaspoon for eight eggs. If your shrimp were cooked in salted water or brine, cut the second addition.
- SauteuseA sauteuse is a sloped-sided saut— in practice a 10-inch skillet, ideally nonstick or well-seasoned. The sloped sides matter here because the eggs are turned constantly with a fork or spatula.
- Five minutes for cooked shrimpThe shrimp are already cooked. Five minutes of frying turns them tough and rubbery. Warm them in the butter for about a minute, just until fragrant and coated, then add the parsley and the eggs.
- Six minutes for the eggsSix minutes over anything but very low heat will give you dry, grainy eggs. Over gentle heat, stirring steadily, eight eggs come together in three to four minutes and should be pulled while still visibly wet — they finish on the hot dish.
- The hinge: heat controlEverything in this dish depends on keeping the pan below a sizzle once the eggs go in. If the butter is browning or the eggs set on contact, the pan is too hot; lift it off the burner and keep stirring.
- Heart-shaped croutonsCut them from firm white bread with a cutter or a knife and fry in clarified butter until golden on both sides, or brush with butter and bake at 375F for 8"10 min
- YieldEight eggs and twelve shrimp serve four as a lunch or supper dish, three if it is the centre of the meal.
This is hotel cooking written down in shorthand: the vocabulary — sauteuse, dress on a hot dish, heart-shaped croutons around the edge — belongs to the French professional kitchen that dominated large American and British hotels and restaurants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Croutons cut in hearts, crescents or diamonds were a common garnish for soft, shapeless dishes like scrambled eggs, creamed mixtures and salpicons, giving the plate an outline the food itself could not hold. Shrimp with eggs appears across a good many national traditions, but the specific treatment here — shellfish warmed in butter, eggs poured over, parsley, brisk stirring — is the method a French menu would call oeufs brouillés aux crevettes.