Common Sense in the Household 43

Common Sense in the Household 43

POACHED EGGS À LA CRÈME. ✠

 

Nearly fill a clean frying-pan with strained water boiling hot; strain

a tablespoonful of vinegar through double muslin, and add to the water

with a little salt. Slip your eggs from the saucer upon the top of the

water (first taking the pan from the fire.) Boil three minutes and a

half, drain, and lay on buttered toast in a hot dish. Turn the water

from the pan and pour in half a cupful of cream or milk. If you use the

latter, thicken with a very little corn-starch. Let it heat to a boil,

stirring to prevent burning, and add a great spoonful of butter, some

pepper and salt. Boil up once, and pour over the eggs. A better way

still is to heat the milk in a separate saucepan, that the eggs may not

have to stand. A little broth improves the sauce.

 

 

HAM AND EGGS.

 

Fry the eggs in a little very nice salted lard; drain off every drop

of grease, and lay them upon a hot dish, with neat slices of fried ham

around the edges, half the size of the slice as first carved from the

ham. Trim off the rough edges of the eggs, and cut the ham evenly in

oblong pieces before dishing. Garnish with parsley.

 

 

FRIED EGGS.

 

Melt some butter in a frying-pan, and when it hisses drop in the eggs

carefully. Fry three minutes; dust with pepper and salt, and transfer

to a hot dish.

 

 

FRICASSEED EGGS. ✠

 

Boil the eggs hard, cut in half crosswise, and take out the yolks. Chop

these fine, or rub to a paste, with a little ground tongue or ham or

cold fowl, some minced parsley, some melted butter, and a _very_ little

made mustard. Work well together and fill the whites with it, setting

them close together in a deep covered dish, the open ends up. Have

ready some veal gravy or chicken broth; heat to boiling in a saucepan

with a half teaspoonful chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lastly three

tablespoonfuls of cream to a cup of broth. Boil up; pour smoking hot

over the eggs, let them stand five minutes, closely covered, and send

to table.

 

This is not an expensive dish. Eggs are always a cheaper breakfast-dish

for a small family than meat, even at fifty cents a dozen. Six will

make a nice quantity of the fricassee, and it is a delicious relish.

Always drop hard-boiled eggs into cold water as soon as they are done,

to prevent the yolks from turning black.

 

 

BREADED EGGS. ✠

 

Boil hard, and cut in round thick slices. Pepper and salt; dip each

in beaten raw egg, then in fine bread-crumbs or powdered cracker, and

fry in nice dripping or butter, hissing hot. Drain off every drop of

grease, and serve on a hot dish for breakfast, with sauce, like that

for fricasseed eggs, poured over them.

 

 

BAKED EGGS.

 

Break six or seven eggs into a buttered dish, taking care that each

is whole, and does not encroach upon the others so much as to mix or

disturb the yolks. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, and put a bit of

butter upon each. Put into an oven and bake until the whites are well

set. Serve very hot, with rounds of buttered toast, or sandwiches.

 

 

SCRAMBLED EGGS. ✠

 

Put a good piece of butter in a frying-pan, and when it is hot drop in

the eggs, which should be broken whole into a bowl. Stir in with them a

little chopped parsley, some pepper and salt, and keep stirring to and

fro, up and down, without cessation, for three minutes. Turn out at

once into a hot dish, or upon buttered toast and eat without delay.

 

 

CHINESE BIRD’S-NEST OF EGGS.

 

Make a white sauce as follows: Stew half a pound of lean veal, cut

into strips, with a large sprig of parsley, in a quart of water, until

the meat is in rags, and the liquor reduced one-half. Strain through

tarlatan or lace, and return to the saucepan with half a cupful of

milk. When it boils, thicken with a little rice or wheat flour, season

with white pepper and salt, and the juice of half a lemon. Set in the

corner to keep hot. Have ready six, or eight, or ten hard-boiled eggs.

Take out the yolks carefully, and cut the whites into thin shreds. Pile

the yolks in the centre of a round, shallow dish, arrange the shreds of

white about them in the shape of a bird’s nest; give a final stir to

the sauce, and pour carefully over the eggs. It should not rise higher

in the dish than half way to the top of the nest, when it flows down to

its level. Garnish with parsley.

 

 

SCALLOPED EGGS. ✠

 

Make a force-meat of chopped ham—ground is better—fine bread-crumbs,

pepper, salt, a little minced parsley, and some melted butter.

Moisten with milk to a soft paste, and half fill some patty-pans or

scallop-shells with the mixture. Break an egg carefully upon the

top of each, dust with pepper and salt, and sift some very finely

powdered cracker over all. Set in the oven, and bake until the eggs are

_well_ set—about eight minutes. Eat hot. They are very nice. You can

substitute ground tongue for the ham.

 

 

POACHED EGGS, WITH SAUCE. ✠

 

Make the sauce by putting half a cupful of hot water in a saucepan,

with a teaspoonful of lemon-juice, three tablespoonfuls of veal or

chicken broth (strained), pepper, salt, mace, and a tablespoonful of

butter, with a little minced parsley. Boil slowly ten minutes, and stir

in a well-whipped egg carefully, lest it should curdle. Have ready some

poached eggs in a deep dish, and pour the sauce over them.

 

 

EGGS UPON TOAST. ✠

 

Put a good lump of butter into the frying-pan. When it is hot, stir in

four or five well-beaten eggs, with pepper, salt, and a little parsley.

Stir and toss for three minutes. Have ready to your hand some slices

of buttered toast (cut round with a tin cake-cutter before they are

toasted); spread thickly with ground or minced tongue, chicken, or

ham. Heap the stirred egg upon these in mounds, and set in a hot dish

garnished with parsley and pickled beets.

 

 

EGGS AU LIT (_in bed_). ✠

 

Mince some cold fowl—chicken, turkey, or duck (or some cold boiled veal

and ham in equal quantities)—very fine, and rub in a Wedgewood mortar,

adding by degrees some melted butter, pepper, salt, minced parsley, and

two beaten eggs. Warm in a frying-pan when it is well mixed, stirring

in a little hot water should it dry too fast. Cook five minutes,

stirring to keep it from scorching or browning. Form, on a hot platter

or flat dish, into a mound, flat on top, with a ridge of the mixture

running all around. It is easily moulded with a broad-bladed knife. In

the dish thus formed, on the top of the mince-meat, lay as many poached

eggs as it will hold, sprinkling them with pepper and salt. Arrange

triangles of buttered toast in such order, at the base of the mound,

that they shall make a pointed wall against it.

 

 

DEVILLED EGGS.

 

Boil six or eight eggs hard; leave in cold water until they are cold;

cut in halves, slicing a bit off the bottoms to make them stand

upright, _à la_ Columbus. Extract the yolks, and rub to a smooth paste

with a very little melted butter, some cayenne pepper, a touch of

mustard, and just a dash of vinegar. Fill the hollowed whites with

this, and send to table upon a bed of chopped cresses, seasoned with

pepper, salt, vinegar, and a little sugar. The salad should be two

inches thick, and an egg be served with a heaping tablespoonful of it.

You may use lettuce or white cabbage instead of cresses.

 

 

EGG-BASKETS. ✠

 

Make these for breakfast the day after you have had roast chicken,

duck, or turkey for dinner. Boil six eggs hard, cut neatly in half

and extract the yolks. Rub these to a paste with some melted butter,

pepper, and salt, and set aside. Pound the minced meat of the cold fowl

fine in the same manner, and mix with the egg-paste, moistening with

melted butter as you proceed, or with a little gravy, if you have it to

spare. Cut off a slice from the bottoms of the hollowed whites of the

egg, to make them stand; fill with the paste; arrange close together

upon a flat dish, and pour over them the gravy left from yesterday’s

roast, heated boiling hot, and mellowed by a few spoonfuls of cream or

rich milk.

 

 

OMELETTE (_plain_). ✠

 

Beat six eggs very light, the whites to a stiff froth that will stand

alone, the yolks to a smooth thick batter. Add to the yolks a small

cupful of milk, pepper, and salt; lastly stir in the whites lightly.

Have ready in a hot frying-pan a good lump of butter. When it hisses,

pour in your mixture gently and set over a clear fire. It should cook

in ten minutes at most. Do not stir, but contrive, as the eggs “set,”

to slip a broad-bladed knife under the omelette to guard against

burning at the bottom. The instant “hiss” of the butter as it flows to

the hottest part of the pan will prove the wisdom and efficacy of the

precaution. If your oven is hot, you may put the frying-pan into it as

soon as the middle of the omelette is set. When done, lay a hot dish

bottom upward on the top of the pan, and dexterously upset the latter

to bring the browned side of the omelette uppermost. Eat soon, or it

will fall.

 

I _know_ these directions to be worthy of note. I have never seen

lighter or better omelettes anywhere than in households where these

have been the rule for years in the manufacture of this simple and delightful article of food.