Creamed Eggs
2 tablespoons Mazola 1 cup diced celery 2 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon paprika 1 pint milk 6 hard boiled eggs, sliced 1 teaspoon minced parsley (optional) Pour the Mazola in a saucepan, add the celery and simmer ten minutes. Stir in the cornstarch and seasonings, add the minutes. Stir in the cornstarch and seasonings, add the milk, bring to boiling point, carefully add the eggs, and serve in pastry shells, on buttered split tea biscuits, or plain boiled rice.
A cornstarch-thickened white sauce built on oil rather than butter, from a corn-products promotional cookbook. It comes together in about fifteen minutes once the eggs are boiled.
- The branded ingredientsMazola is corn oil and Argo or Kingsford's cornstarch is plain cornstarch; any neutral oil and any cornstarch work the same way. The book was a promotional publication for these products, which is why they are named here rather than the generic ingredients.
- Cornstarch, not flourTwo tablespoons cornstarch to a pint of milk gives a medium sauce with a glossier, slightly more translucent set than a flour roux. It must reach a full boil to lose its raw starch taste, but once thickened it should not be boiled hard or held long, as prolonged heat and stirring break the gel and thin the sauce.
- Simmering the celery in oilTen minutes over low heat softens the diced celery without browning it. Keep the heat gentle; the oil should barely shimmer, and the celery should stay pale.
- Adding the milkStir the cornstarch into the oil and celery, then add the milk gradually while whisking. Cold milk poured in slowly prevents lumps; the mixture will look thin until it approaches boiling, then thicken quickly.
- The eggs go in last"carefully add the eggs" suggests folding rather than brisk stirring. Sliced hard-boiled eggs break into crumbs if agitated, and they need only a minute in the hot sauce to warm through.
- Pint measureA pint is two cups. Six eggs and a pint of sauce serves four generously over rice or toast, three if you are filling pastry shells.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of salt for a pint of milk is modest by current taste; season again after the sauce thickens. The paprika is a sweet paprika, used mostly for colour.
Creamed eggs on toast is often said to have been one of the workhorses of the American supper table from roughly the 1890s through the Depression: cheap protein, a sauce made from pantry staples, and a vehicle for whatever bread or rice was on hand. This version's interest lies in its provenance. Corn Products Refining Company, which owned Mazola, Argo and Kingsford's, published cookbooks throughout the 1910s and 1920s to persuade cooks that corn oil could replace butter in a white sauce and cornstarch could replace flour as a thickener. Cornstarch had been a household thickener since the mid-nineteenth century; the oil-for-butter substitution was the newer argument, and it was made largely through recipes like this one, where the branded product is named in place of the generic ingredient. The suggestion to serve it in pastry shells rather than on toast marks it as a supper dish with some pretension to company manners.