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.