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Scrambled Eggs with Spinach
Remove stalks from one quart very fresh spinach, wash in cold water, dress on sieve, then plunge in saucepan with a quart water, teaspoon salt, and boil for ten minutes. Dress on a sieve and press out water with skimmer, then finely chop them and place in saucepan with a teaspoon butter, two tablespoons cream and three saltspoons each salt and sugar, stir well on fire while heating for three minutes and keep hot.
Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill milk, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in saucepan, drop in eggs and cook for six minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile, spread half the spinach on a deep dish, dress half the scrambled eggs over, spread balance spinach over eggs, then balance of eggs over spinach and serve.
A straightforward composed egg dish; the only real pitfalls are two timings that reflect turn-of-the-century tastes rather than good practice today.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is 3/4 teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, making the half gill of milk 1/4 cup.
- A quart of spinachMeasured loose in a bowl, that is a fairly modest quantity of leaves before trimming, cooking down to well under a cup once chopped and pressed. Modern bagged baby spinach needs no destalking.
- Ten minutes is far too longBoiled that hard, spinach turns grey-olive and loses most of its texture. Thirty seconds to two minutes in salted boiling water is enough; press it dry in a sieve exactly as directed, because wet spinach will thin the eggs.
- The hinge: low heat on the eggsSix minutes of stirring only works over gentle heat. On a modern burner at anything above medium-low the eggs will set and weep in half that time. Keep the pan low, stir constantly, and pull it while the curds still look slightly underdone.
- The sugar is not a mistakeSugar alongside an equal measure of salt turns up in period spinach recipes; it rounds out the mineral edge. Reduce or omit to taste, but taste before deciding.
- PepperTwo saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper for eight eggs, which is assertive by modern standards. White pepper keeps the layers looking clean.
- Assembly and yieldFour alternating layers in a warmed deep dish; the eggs will not hold their tiers long, so build it at the table's edge and serve at once. Eight eggs feeds four generously as a lunch or supper dish.
Layered eggs and spinach of this kind belong to the restaurant-French repertoire that American hotel cooks carried into domestic cookbooks around 1900 -- the same tradition that gave English-language menus oeufs brouilles aux epinards and everything a la florentine, spinach having long been associated with Florence in French kitchen naming. The wording here suggests a professional source: the spinach is dressed on a sieve rather than drained, and the water is pressed out with a skimmer. The cream, butter and pinch of sugar in the spinach are a common treatment of the day, meant to soften a vegetable this recipe itself boils hard and long, and the alternating layers are dining-room presentation for a dish that is, underneath, scrambled eggs.