How to make 1755 Scrambled Eggs

Welcome to 18th Century Cooking. I'm your host John Townsend and today we're digging into the 18th century origins of scrambled eggs. This one ought to be fun. Thanks for joining us today as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18th century. It's another cold January day here in Indiana and we're here by the Roaring Fire and I've been thinking about how I generally research for doing an 18th century recipe and really there's several different things I look for and one of the main things though is does our modern food that we eat today, where does it connect with history? Where does it go 200 years ago, 300 years ago? And one of the main ways we look at that even if the recipe is almost the same, one of the things that's really, really different is the environment that you have to cook in and today's episode is, well, it's very connected with that topic because we're doing something that, I mean, you might cook every day for breakfast or you can go to any diner and get it. Scrambled eggs. But how do you make them when you've got this roaring fire and a bunch of coals? The recipe might be very, very similar but how we cook it definitely has to have some changes to it. So, if you go digging in the 18th century cookbooks and you look for scrambled eggs, you turn to the back of the index and look it up, you're never going to find it. It's not there because it's not called scrambled eggs in the 18th century. Buttered eggs is what you want to dig for. Now, I had a choice of a half a dozen, eight or ten different buttered egg recipes to choose from but I'm going to read this one. Maybe you'll see why I chose this particular one. This is out of the New and Easy Method of Cookery by Elizabeth Cleland. This is 1775. This particular cookbook leans toward the northern English cooking or Scottish cooking. This one was actually printed in Edinburgh. Let's see. To butter eggs, take eight eggs, put them in a stew pan after they are well beaten with a little salt and nutmeg, right? And put them to a quarter of a pound of sweet butter, a spoonful of sweet cream, keep them stirring all the time they are on the fire from the bottom of the pan, then put them on toasted bread when they are thick. Perfect scrambled eggs recipe. Of course, it's got the wonderful addition of an 18th century cookbook and they put nutmeg in it. And I guess the thing that really pops out to me is I'm not sure about the order of how these things go in and, of course, it's got a massive quantity of butter. So, this has got to be good. So, let's get started on this. I've got some bread already toasted. So, let's cover these ingredients. There aren't very many. We need some eggs. I'm going to make a half recipe of this because I don't need that many scrambled eggs. So, four nice eggs. We need a little bit of salt. Obviously, some nutmeg. I'm going to go ahead and add pepper. Most of the other recipes did include pepper, at least at the end. And then we just need the butter and the cream. And then at the very end, we'll need the toasts. So, not very many ingredients. Let's get started. So, now comes to the challenging part of cooking this. Obviously, if you're in a modern kitchen, you've got these dials and controls that you can just get the right amount of heat. And if you've ever done scrambled eggs, you can't cook them fast. That's a bad thing. And in this circumstance, we have to figure out how to cook these slow. In a lot of 18th century recipes, they actually talk about this part because it is challenging. Some of the recipes talk about cooking these eggs over a chafing dish. So, a little jar of like coals, right? So, we're going to bring some coals out of the main fire so it's not as hot. We have a little bit more control. We're going to use our spider pan that's got some nice distance off the fire. And really, our choice for heat control is distance away from the fire. So, it even talks about having this not too close to the fire, moving it away from the fire. So, we're going to have some coals down underneath. If this gets too hot, I can knock the coals down or I can push them out of the way. So, here's our egg mixture. It's already ready to go in, but it can be confusing about how this recipe works. You have to use other recipes to help interpret what this one is like. It says to put the eggs into the pan and then it says to beat them well, but it means beat them well and then put them in the pan. So, obviously, we don't want to beat them right in the pan necessarily. And the butter, some recipes seem to imply that you melt the butter and put it in the mixture and other ones say, no, the butter goes in cold and it just goes in along with the eggs and it melts at the same time. So, that's what we're going to use even though this particular recipe doesn't mention that. That's how we're going to do it. And the cream just kind of goes in at the same time. I would normally just whisk it straight in. That's not how the recipe does. We're right here by the fire. And one of the great things I love about this particular recipe is here we are in this primitive cabin and in so many of the resources that you read about people living in a cabin like this, you find out that they have very few utensils. And the bread is the perfect utensil in this case. It's actually made to pick right up, eat off of it. You don't need a fork, you don't need a spoon, you don't need anything to eat these eggs. Let's try them out. The texture is perfect on these eggs. And one of the really, really interesting things, when I was thinking about this, usually when I make scrambled eggs, I put cheese in there because it kind of thickens it up. This tastes just like they've got cheese in them, but they don't. Just amazing flavor. And of course, it had so much wonderful butter in there to bring that flavor in. And it didn't stick in the pan at all. Even a pan like that I was using that is not a non-stick pan. Let me tell you, eggs came right out of that pan so easy and it tastes so good. So in this one, it's all about that slow cooking. You get this incredible texture. You don't want that brown stuff that happens at the bottom of the pan. And the recipe said, you know, be careful of that. Now there is one recipe that's a little bit later on that actually talks about coming over the top of these when they're finished and warming them up with the salamander. Actually, it says brown them. I don't think he actually means that. I think he means to make sure they're nice and warm. Such a wonderful recipe. And we see scrambled eggs 250 years ago, almost exactly like we make today, except of course, that wonderful addition of nutmeg. I love the comparison between the two. I can't recommend this recipe enough to try these out, especially if you can do it over an open fire like this. If you're looking for another episode that's similar to this one, make sure to check out this wonderful Welsh rabbit recipe.