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.