of a fellow-traveler along the humble but honorable pathway of every-day and practical life, bringing comfort and encouragement, even in the “heated term.”
EGGS.
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“Give me half-a-dozen eggs, a few spoonfuls of gravy and as much cream, with a spoonful of butter and a handful of bread crumbs, and I can get up a good breakfast or luncheon,” said a housekeeper to me once, in a modest boastfulness that became her well, in my eyes.
For I had sat often at her elegant, but frugal board, and I knew she spoke the truth.
“Elegant and frugal!” I shall have more hope of American housewives when they learn to have faith in this combination of adjectives. Nothing has moved me more strongly to the preparation of this work than the desire to convert them to the belief that the two are not incompatible or inharmonious. Under no head can practice in the endeavor to conform these, the one to the other, be more easily and successfully pursued than under that which begins this section.
Eggs at sixty cents per dozen (and they are seldom higher than this price) are the cheapest food for the breakfast or lunch-table of a private family. They are nutritious, popular, and never (if we except the cases of omelettes, thickened with uncooked flour, and fried eggs, drenched with fat) an unelegant or homely dish.
Eggs Sur le Plat.
6 eggs.
1 table-spoonful of butter or nice dripping.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Melt the butter on a stone-china, or tin plate, or shallow baking-dish. Break the eggs carefully into this; dust lightly with pepper and salt, and put in a moderate oven until the whites are well “set.”
Serve in the dish in which they were baked.
Toasted Eggs.
Cover the bottom of an earthenware or stone-china dish with rounds of delicately toasted bread. Or, what is even better, with rounds of stale bread dipped in beaten egg and fried quickly in butter or nice dripping, to a golden-brown. Break an egg carefully upon each, and set the dish immediately in front of, and on a level with a glowing fire. Toast over this as many slices of fat corned pork or ham as there are eggs in the dish, holding the meat so that it will fry very quickly, and all the dripping fall upon the eggs. When these are well “set,” and a crust begins to form upon the top of each, they are done. Turn the dish several times while toasting the meat, that the eggs may be equally cooked.
Do not send the fried pork to table, but pepper the eggs lightly and remove with the toast, to the dish in which they are to go to the table, with a cake-turner or flat ladle, taking care not to break them.
Baked Eggs. (No. 1.)
6 eggs.
4 tablespoonfuls good gravy—veal, beef or poultry. The latter is particularly nice.
1 handful bread-crumbs.
6 rounds buttered toast or fried bread.
Put the gravy into a shallow baking-dish. Break the eggs into this, pepper and salt them, and strew the bread-crumbs over them. Bake for five minutes in a quick oven. Take up the eggs carefully, one by one, and lay upon the toast which must be arranged on a hot, flat dish. Add a little cream, and, if you like, some very finely-chopped parsley and onion, to the gravy left in the baking-dish, and turn it into a saucepan. Boil up once quickly, and pour over the eggs.
Baked Eggs. (No. 2.)
6 eggs.
1 cup of chicken, game, or veal gravy.
1 teaspoonful mixed parsley and onion, chopped fine.
1 handful very fine bread-crumbs.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Pour enough gravy into a neat baking-dish to cover the bottom well, and mix with the rest the parsley and onion. Set the dish in the oven until the gravy begins to hiss and bubble, when break the eggs into it, so that they do not crowd one another. Strew bread-crumbs thickly over them, pepper and salt, and return to the oven for three minutes longer. Then pour the rest of the gravy, which should be hot, over the whole. More bread-crumbs, as fine as dust, and bake until the eggs are “set.”
Send to table in the baking-dish.
This dish will be found very savory.
Fricasseed Eggs.
6 hard-boiled eggs. When cold, slice with a sharp knife, taking care not to break the yolk.
1 cup good broth, well seasoned with pepper, salt, parsley and a suspicion of onion.
Some rounds stale bread, fried to a light-brown in butter or nice dripping.
Put the broth on the fire in a saucepan with the seasoning and let it come to a boil. Rub the slices of egg with melted butter, then roll them in flour. Lay them gently in the gravy and let this become smoking hot upon the side of the range, but do not let it actually boil, lest the eggs should break. They should lie thus in the gravy for at least five minutes. Have ready, upon a platter, the fried bread. Lay the sliced egg evenly upon this, pour the gravy over all, and serve hot.
Egg Cutlets.
6 hard-boiled eggs.
1 raw egg well-beaten.
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