The CWI Cookbook

Posts Tagged ‘egg’

 Scallops
Beaten egg
Crushed cracker crumbs
Lard for frying

The heart is the only part used. If you buy them in the shell, boil and take out the hearts. Those sold in our markets are generally ready for frying or stewing.
Dip them in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot lard.

Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Many people are suspicious nowadays of scallops, particularly those ordered in restaurants, most particularly those ordered in restaurants which come in breaded and fried forms, as rumors have circulated for years that many are not in fact scallops at all but bits of cheaper fish products (even shark fins!) punched out in circles and pawned off as high-priced shellfish. You can avoid such problems if you follow Mrs. Harland’s advice and buy them in the shell, although we will concede that this is easier said than done for those who live any distance from the shoreline to speak of. Even in her day, it seems, they were commonly sold already pre-shelled, although apparently the shark-fin story had not yet started making the rounds.

 Scraps, crusts and crumbs of bread, 1 lb.
1 pint milk
3 eggs
3 oz. sugar
Nutmeg, ginger or allspice
2 oz. suet, chopped
4 oz. currants (optional)

Put any scraps of bread into a clean saucepan; to about a pound, put a pint of milk; set it on the trivet till it boils; beat it up quite smooth; then break in three eggs, three ounces of sugar, with a little nutmeg, ginger or allspice, and stir it all well together. Butter a dish big enough to hold it, put in the pudding, and have ready two ounces of suet chopped very fine, strew it over the top of the pudding, and bake it three quarters of an hour; four ounces of currants will make it much better.

From The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: This is bread pudding under a catchier, frugal-sounding name. Of course any true frugality is promptly undercut by the addition of expensive spices, fruits, fats and suchlike ingredients, but in that time as in our own, image trumps reality every time.

 1 and 1/2 lb. cold boiled or baked salmon
2 heads white lettuce or celery
3 hard-boiled eggs
2 tbs. salad [olive] oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. white sugar
1 tsp. Worcestershire or anchovy sauce
1 tsp. made mustard
1 teacupful [1/2 c.] vinegar

Mince three-quarters of the salmon, laying aside four or five pieces half an inch wide and four or five [inches] long; cut smoothly and of uniform size. Prepare the dressing in the usual way, and pour over the minced fish. Shred the lettuce, handling as little as possible, and heap in a separate bowl, with pounded ice. This must accompany the salmon, that the guests may help themselves to their liking. Or you may mix the lettuce with the fish, if it is to be eaten immediately. Celery, of course, is always stirred into the salad, when it is used. The reserved pieces of salmon should be laid in the dressing for five minutes before the latter is added to the minced fish, then dipped in vinegar. When you have transferred your salad to the dish in which it is to be served, round it into a mound, and lay the strips upon it in such a manner as to divide it into triangular sections, the bars all meeting at the top and diverging at the base. Between these have subdivisions of chain-work made of the whites of the boiled eggs, each circle overlapping that next to it.
You can dress halibut the same way.

From Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: This recipe looks as if it could have come out of a cookbook published today. The only difference, perhaps, is in the nature of the vegetables called for. While the style, and advice of nutritionists, nowadays calls for lettuces and celeries of the brightest green available, since they contain more nutrients, in the mid 19th century white was the preference, presumably because of its connotations of purity.

The use of Worcestershire sauce in the dressing is not an anachronism, as the product has been commercially available in the US as well as Britain since the 1840s. Bottled sauces of anchovies, mustards and the like were also starting to come on the market, but pure-food laws had not yet caught up, and most cookbooks recommend making them at home for reasons of both economy and quality control.

 1/4 lb. baking chocolate
1 pint water
8 egg yolks beaten with 6 egg whites
1 qt. cream or whole milk
3 tbs. sugar, granulated or confectioners
Sweetened whipped cream or egg whites, to top

Scrape fine a quarter of a pound of chocolate, and pour on it a pint of boiling water. Cover it, and let it stand by the fire till it has dissolved, stirring it twice. Beat eight eggs very light, omitting the whites of two. Stir them by degrees into a quart of cream or rich milk, alternately with the melted chocolate, and three table-spoonfuls of powdered white sugar. Put the mixture into cups, and bake it about ten minutes. Send them to table cold, with sweetened cream, or white of egg beaten to a stiff froth, and heaped on the top of each custard. No chocolate is so good as Baker’s prepared cocoa.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery by Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1851.

Comment: Chocolate in this period was normally sold much like sugar was, in large solid blocks in stores from which the merchant would chop or hack off a piece if the customer did not wish to purchase the whole thing. “Rich milk” was what would today be called whole milk, from which none of the cream had been removed.

We do not know if the mention of “Baker’s prepared cocoa” was an unsolicited testimonial of personal appreciation or an early form of what is now called a “product placement ad” for which the grateful company provided the author with a (monetary) expression of gratitude. In either case the “Baker’s Chocolate” products found in stores today is made by the corporate descendant of the same company Miss Leslie was so fond of. And no, they have not paid us anything for this mention of their company.

 1 qt. milk
Sticks of cinnamon OR three peach leaves
6 eggs, beaten
2 tbs. white sugar

Put a quart of milk into a tin pail or a pitcher that holds two quarts; set it into a kettle of hot water. Tin is better than earthen, because it heats so much quicker. Put in a few sticks of cinnamon, or three peach leaves. When the milk foams up as if nearly boiling, stir in six eggs which have been beaten, with two spoonfuls of white sugar; stir it every instant, until it appears to thicken a little. Then take out the pail, and pour the custard immediately into a cold pitcher, because the heat of the pail will cook the part of the custard that touches it, too much, so that it will curdle. This is a very easy way of making custards, and none can be better. But in order to have them good, you must attend to nothing else until they are finished. You may make them as rich as you choose. A pint of milk, a pint of cream, and eight eggs will make them rich enough for any epicure. So, on the other hand, they are very good with three or four eggs only to a quart of milk, and no cream.

From The Young Housekeeper’s Friend by Mrs. [M.H.] Cornelius, 1863

Comment: As few of us keep tin pails around as cooking utensils these days, it will probably be easier to make this recipe in a double boiler since that is the technique in question here. Custard usually suggests nowadays a semi-solid pudding, eaten with a spoon, but this one is thin enough that it could serve as a drink. Commercially packaged “boiled custard,” indeed a drink, is found in stores in the South in the same part of the dairy case, and at the same time of year, as eggnog. The two drinks are indeed similar in many ways, although eggnog is spicier and goes better with brandy.

 6 oz. stale bread, crusts removed
5 eggs
1/2 oz. parsley
1/4 oz. lemon thyme

Instructions: Soften the bread thoroughly in a dish; with a little boiling water, covering it over, and let it soak for an hour–then mash it up with a fork, picking out the hard pieces, and adding the parsley and lemon thyme, chopped fine with salt and pepper, as seasoning. Beat the eggs well, mix them intimately with the other ingredients, and bake in a buttered dish (buttered cold) for about 40 minutes. Turn it out of the dish, garnished with parsley, and serve with brown sauce.

From The Home Manual, or Economical Cook and House-Book by Elizabeth Nicholson, 1865.

Comment: Every household kept a jar in the kitchen into which any leftover bit of bread was put, down to the crumbs swept up off the tablecloth at the end of a meal. When you have to make every bit of your own bread with your own hands, pans and oven, you have a different feeling towards it than you do about a loaf for which you gave $.69 at the market! The breadcrumb jar was reached for any time some stale crumbs were need for stuffing a turkey, making a coating for a fried food, or perhaps for thickening a sauce. And if it ever got too full, or if things got truly tight in the food department, why, with the addition of a few eggs, voila! A relatively quick and easy meal, either breakfast or dinner, could be produced.