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Eggs on Toast
Boil eggs until hard. Remove shell and cut the eggs into thick slices, dip in egg and bread crumbs and fry in hot butter. Serve on hot toast that has been dipped in hot water and buttered.
A hard-boiled egg, breaded and fried, on toast that has been softened in hot water. The whole thing depends on slices that hold together, so treat the boiling and the cutting as the main work.
- Boiling the eggsTwelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives a firm yolk without the grey-green ring. Chill them thoroughly before slicing; a warm egg crumbles under the knife.
- Cutting thick slicesUse a thin blade wiped wet between cuts, and aim for slices about a third of an inch. Thinner rounds break apart in the breading and again in the pan.
- The breading"Dip in egg and bread crumbs" means the standard coating: beaten egg, seasoned with salt and pepper since nothing else in the dish is seasoned, then fine dry crumbs. A first dusting of flour helps the egg wash cling to the slippery white.
- Frying butterWhole butter at the heat needed to crisp crumbs will brown and speck. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better; work over medium heat and turn once.
- Toast dipped in hot waterThis is deliberate, not a misprint. A quick dip softens dry toast so it yields under a fork and takes butter greedily. One or two seconds in water just off the boil is enough, then drain, butter and serve at once, or it goes to pulp.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; two eggs and one slice of toast per person suits a breakfast portion. The eggs can be boiled and peeled the day before; bread and fry to order.
Fried hard-boiled eggs turn up in nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century American breakfast chapters, often where the problem being solved is a surplus of cooked eggs rather than a craving for anything elaborate. Breading and frying was one common way to give leftover boiled eggs, cold fish or yesterday's meat a fresh face at the morning table. Soaking toast briefly in hot water, or in milk or broth, also appears in printed cookbooks of the period as a way of softening bread that had dried out. Breakfast sections of books like this one tend to assume a cooked hot meal in the morning and lean heavily on eggs as cheap, quick and easily varied.