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Stuffed Eggs
1 cup white sauce (see teaspoon mustard 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter Few grains of cayenne Cut the hard-cooked eggs in halves lengthwise; remove yolks, mash, add grated American cheese, vinegar, mustard and salt and a few grains of cayenne. Add melted butter. Shape in balls size of original yolks, refill whites. Place in a baking dish, pour around white sauce. Bake in an oven with buttered crumbs.
A stuffed-egg gratin from the era when eggs and cheese were routinely served as the main protein at supper. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so the quantities below are worth setting before you begin.
- What is missingThe printed list gives no number of eggs, no weight of cheese and no measure of vinegar, and the mustard quantity is lost in the truncated cross-reference. For 1 cup of white sauce, six hard-cooked eggs, about 3/4 cup grated cheese and 2 teaspoons vinegar would be in proportion; the salt, butter and cayenne are as given.
- American cheeseIn a book of this date this means domestic factory cheddar, firm and sharp enough to grate, not the processed slices sold under the name now. Use a medium or sharp cheddar.
- White sauceA plain béchamel: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, cooked until it coats a spoon. Season it lightly, since the filling already carries salt, mustard and vinegar.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives none. The dish is fully cooked going in, so it needs only heating through and browning: 375°F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crumbs colour.
- Buttered crumbsToss about 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs with a tablespoon of melted butter and scatter over the top before baking, not after. Dry crumbs from a canister will scorch before the dish is hot.
- Hard-cooked eggsBring to a boil, cover, take off the heat and stand 10 to 12 minutes, then chill in cold water. Prolonged hard boiling gives the green sulphide ring and a rubbery white.
- Filling textureMash the yolks smooth before the melted butter goes in, or the balls will crumble when you shape them. If the mixture is too stiff to hold together, a teaspoon of the white sauce will bind it.
- YieldSix eggs make twelve halves, enough for four as a light main course with bread and a green vegetable.
Treating eggs as a stand-in for meat belongs to the early twentieth-century campaign, run by home economists and reinforced during the First World War, to persuade households that eggs, cheese, beans and nuts could carry a meal in place of a chop. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company distributed its cook book free to policyholders, so the recipes lean toward cheap, filling, easily costed food. Stuffed eggs themselves are much older: seasoning mashed yolks and returning them to the whites is documented in European cookery well before the nineteenth century. What marks this version as American and of its moment is the mustard-and-vinegar bite, and the decision to flood the whole thing with white sauce and crumbs and bake it into a hot supper dish rather than serve it cold on a platter.