Eggs, Curried.—Take some [hard-boiled eggs], cut them in halves (remove the half-yolks), and cut them into rings. Place all these rings round the edge of the dish, and pile the white rings up to make a sort of border; pour some thick [curry sauce] in the middle, place the half-yolks at equal distances apart, on the white round the edge, and sprinkle a few specks of green parsley round the edge on the whites; this will give the dish a pretty appearance.
Eggs, Devilled.—Take, say, half a dozen eggs, boil them hard, remove the shells while hot, cut them in halves, scoop out the yolk, and cut a tiny piece off the bottom of each white cup, so that it will stand upright—à la Columbus. Next take all the yolks, and put them in a basin, and pound them with a little butter till you get a thick squash; add some cayenne pepper, according to taste, a little white pepper, a little salt, and a few drops of chilli-vinegar or ordinary vinegar; you can also add a little finely chopped parsley—say a teaspoonful. Fill each cup with some of this mixture, and as there will be more than enough to fill them, owing to the butter, bring them to a point, like a cone. Devilled eggs are best served cold, in which case they look best placed on a silver or ordinary dish, the bottom of which is covered with green parsley; the white looks best on a green bed. Some cooks chop up the little bits of white cut off from the bottom of the cups, divide them into two portions, and colour one half pink by shaking them in a saucer with a few drops of cochineal. These white and pink specks are then sprinkled over the parsley.
N.B.—In an ordinary way devilled eggs require anchovy sauce to be mixed with the yolks, but anchovy sauce is not allowed in vegetarian cookery.
Eggs à la bonne femme.—Proceed exactly as in making [devilled eggs], till you place the yolks in the basin; then add to these yolks, while hot, a little dissolved butter, and small pieces of chopped cold boiled carrot, turnip, celery, and beet-root; season with white pepper and salt, and mix well together. Add also a suspicion of nutmeg and a little lemon-juice. Fill the cups with this while the mixture is moist, as when the butter gets cold the mixture gets firm. If you use chopped beet-root as well as other vegetables, it is best to fill half the cups with half the mixture before any beetroot is added, then add the beet-root and stir the mixture well up and it will turn a bright red. Now fill the remaining half of the cups, and place them on the dish containing the parsley, alternately. The red contrasts prettily with the light yellowish white of the first half. Do not colour the white specks with cochineal, as this is a different shade of red from the beet-root. You can chop up the white and sprinkle it over the parsley with a little chopped beet-root as well.
Eggs à la tripe.—Small Spanish onions are perhaps best for this dish, but ordinary onions can be used. Cut the onions cross-ways after peeling them, so that they fall in rings, and remove the white core. Two Spanish or half a dozen ordinary onions will be sufficient. Fry these rings of onions in butter till they are tender, without browning them. Take them out of the frying-pan and put them aside. Add a spoonful of flour to the frying-pan, and make a paste with the butter, and then add sufficient milk so that when it is boiled and stirred up it makes a thick sauce; add pepper and salt, a little lemon-juice, and a small quantity of grated nutmeg. Put back the rings of onions into this, and let them simmer gently. Take half a dozen [hard-boiled eggs], cut the eggs in halves, remove the yolks, and cut the whites into rings, like the onions, mixing these white egg-rings with the onions and sauce; make the whole hot and serve on a dish, using the hard-boiled half-yolks to garnish; sprinkle a little chopped parsley over the whole, and serve.
Egg, Forcemeat of, or Egg Balls.—Take three hard-boiled yolks of eggs, powder them, mix in a raw yolk, add a little pepper and salt, a small quantity of grated nutmeg, about a saltspoonful of finely chopped parsley, chopped up with a pinch of savoury herbs, or a pinch of dust from bottled savoury herbs, sifted from them, may be added instead. Roll these into balls not bigger than a very small marble, flour them, and throw them into boiling water till they are set.
In many parts of the Continent, hard-boiled yolks of eggs, served whole, are used as egg balls. A much cheaper way of making egg balls is as follows:—Beat up one egg, add a teaspoonful of chopped blanched parsley, some pepper and salt, and a very little grated nutmeg. Sift a bottle of ordinary mixed savoury herbs in a sieve, and take about half a saltspoonful of the dust and mix this with the egg, This will be found really better than using the herbs themselves. Now make some very fine bread-crumbs from stale bread, and mix this with the beaten-up egg till you make a sort of soft paste or dough; roll this into balls the size of a marble, flour them, and throw them into boiling water. The balls must be small or they will split in boiling.
Eggs au gratin.—Make about half a pint of [butter sauce], make it hot over the fire, and stir in about two ounces of Parmesan cheese, a quarter of a nutmeg grated, some white pepper, and the juice of half a lemon. Make this hot, and then add the yolks of four eggs. Stir it all up, and keep stirring very quickly till the mixture begins to thicken, when you must instantly remove it from the fire, but continue stirring for another minute. In the meantime have ready some [hard-boiled eggs], cut these into slices, and make a circle of the bigger slices on a dish; then spread a layer of the mixture over the slices of egg, and place another layer on this smaller than the one below, then another layer of mixture, and so on with alternate layers till you pile it up in the shape of a pyramid. Spread a layer of the remainder of the mixture over the surface, and sprinkle some powdered light-coloured bread-raspings mixed with some grated Parmesan cheese over the whole; place the dish in the oven to get hot and to slightly brown, and then serve. Some fried bread cut into pretty shapes can be used to ornament the base.
Eggs and Spinach.—Make a thick purée of spinach; take some [hard-boiled eggs], cut them in halves while hot, after removing the shells, and press each half a little way into the purée, so that the yellow yolk will be shown surrounded by the white ring. Be very careful not to smear the edge with the spinach.
N.B.—Sometimes eggs are poached and laid on the spinach whole.