Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea. Marion Harland
On this lay the sliced eggs, each piece of which must have been dipped in the thick drawn butter. Sprinkle the ground meat over these, cover with another layer of bread-crumbs, and proceed in like manner, until the egg is all used up. Sift on the top a good layer of dry bread-crumbs. Cover the dish with an inverted plate, until the contents are heated through, then remove the plate, and brown the top upon the upper grating of the oven.
Whirled Eggs.
6 eggs.
1 quart of boiling water.
Some thin slices of buttered toast.
Pepper and salt to taste.
A table-spoonful of butter.
Put the water, slightly salted, in a saucepan over the fire, and keep it at a fast boil. Stir with a wooden spoon or ladle in one direction until it whirls rapidly. Break the eggs, one at a time, into a cup, and drop each carefully into the centre, or vortex of the boiling whirlpool, which must be kept in rapid motion until the egg is a soft, round ball. Take it out carefully with a perforated spoon, and put it on a slice of buttered toast laid upon a hot dish. Put a bit of butter on the top. Set the dish in the oven to keep it warm, and proceed in the same way with each egg, having but one at a time in the saucepan. When all are done, dust lightly with salt and pepper, and send up hot.
Poached Eggs à la Bonne Femme.
6 eggs.
1 teaspoonful of vinegar.
½ cup nice veal or chicken broth.
Salt and pepper to taste.
½ cup butter or dripping.
Rounds of stale bread, and the beaten yolks of two raw eggs.
Prepare the bread first by cutting it into rather large rounds, and, with a smaller cutter, marking an inner round on each, leaving a narrow rim or wall on the outside. Excavate this cautiously, not to break the bottom of the cup thus indicated, which should be three-quarters of an inch deep. Dip each round thus prepared in the beaten egg, and fry quickly to a yellow-brown in hot butter or dripping. Put in order upon a flat dish, and set in the open oven while you poach the eggs.
Pour about a quart of boiling water into a deep saucepan. Salt slightly, and add the vinegar. Break the eggs into a saucer, one at a time, and, when the water is at a hard boil, slide them singly into the saucepan. If the yolk be broken in putting it in, the effect of the dish is spoiled. When the whites begin to curdle around the edges, lessen the heat, and cook slowly until they are firm enough to bear removal. Take them out with a perforated skimmer, trim each dexterously into a neat round, and lay within the bread-cup described above. When all are in their places, pour over them the gravy, which should be well seasoned and boiling hot.
Eggs Poached with Mushrooms.
6 eggs.
1 tea-cupful of cold chicken or other fowl, minced fine.
2 table-spoonfuls of butter.
About a cupful of good gravy—veal or poultry.
2 dozen mushrooms of fair size, sliced.
Some rounds of fried bread.
1 raw egg beaten light.
Mince the cold meat very fine and work into it the butter, with the beaten egg. Season with pepper and salt, and stir it over the fire in a saucepan until it is smoking-hot. Poach the eggs as in preceding receipt, and trim off the ragged edges. The fried bread must be arranged upon a hot, flat dish, the mince of chicken on this, and the eggs upon the chicken. Have ready in another saucepan the sliced mushrooms and gravy. If you use the French champignons—canned—they should have simmered in the gravy fifteen minutes. If fresh ones, you should have parboiled them in clean water as long, before they are sliced into the gravy, and stewed ten minutes in it. The gravy must be savory, rich and rather highly seasoned. Pour it very hot upon the eggs.
If you will try this receipt, and that for “Eggs à la bonne femme” for yourself, your family and your guests will be grateful to you, and you to the writer.
Anchovy Toast with Eggs.
6 eggs.
1 cupful drawn butter—drawn in milk.
Some rounds of stale bread, toasted and buttered.
A little anchovy paste.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Spread the buttered toast thinly with anchovy paste, and with this cover the bottom of a flat dish. Heat the drawn butter to boiling in a tin vessel set in another of hot water, and stir into this the eggs beaten very light. Season to taste, and heat—stirring all the time—until they form a thick sauce, but do not let them boil. Pour over the toast, and send to table very hot.
Forcemeat Eggs.
6 eggs boiled hard.
1 cupful minced chicken, veal, ham or tongue.
1 cupful of rich gravy.
½ cupful bread-crumbs.
2 tea-spoonfuls mixed parsley, onion, summer savory or sweet marjoram, chopped fine.
Juice of half a lemon.
1 raw egg beaten light.
While the eggs are boiling, make the forcemeat by mixing the minced meat, bread-crumbs, herbs, pepper and salt together, and working well into this the beaten raw egg. When the eggs are boiled hard, drop for a minute into cold water to loosen the shells. Break these away carefully. With a sharp knife divide each egg into halves; cut a piece of the white off at each end (that they may stand firmly when dished), and coat them thickly with the forcemeat. Brown them by setting them in a tin plate on the upper grating of a very hot oven, and heap neatly upon a hot dish. Pour the boiling gravy, in which a little lemon-juice has been squeezed at the last, over them.
A Hen’s Nest.
6 or 8 eggs boiled hard.
1 cup minced chicken, or other fowl, ham, tongue, or, if more convenient, any cold firm fish.
1 cup of drawn butter into which have been stirred two or three table-spoonfuls of good gravy and a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley.
When the eggs are quite cold and firm, cut the whites from the yolks in long thin strips, or shavings, and set them aside to warm in a