Welcome to 18th century cooking I'm your host Jon 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 how I generally research for doing an 18th century recipe and really I 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 with 200 years ago 300 years ago and
one of the one of the main ways we look at that it 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 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 gonna 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 gonna read this one maybe you'll see
why I chose this particular one this is out of the " A 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 they put a nutmeg in it and yet 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 toasting. So let's cover these ingredients there aren't very many we need some eggs I'm gonna
make a half recipe of this cuz I don't need that many scrambled eggs so four nice eggs we need a
little bit of salt obviously some some nutmeg I'm gonna 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 the 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 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 we're gonna we're going to some of the some of
the recipes talk about cooking you would these eggs over a chafing dish so a little little jar
of like coals right so we're gonna bring some coals out of the main fire so it's not as hot we
have a little bit more control we're gonna use our spider pan it'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 gonna 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 we don't 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 then it just goes in along with the eggs and it melts at
the same time so that's what we're gonna use even though this particular recipe doesn't mention that
that's how we're gonna 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 so let's do it just like the recipe.
These smell wonderful they're on this wonderful toast 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 use I put I put cheese in there because it
you know kind of thickens it up and does 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 nonstick 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 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 a
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 and
love the comparison between the two I can't recommend this recipe enough to try these out
if you specially if you can do it open over and 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.