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.