Page:Practical cooking and dinner giving.pdf/218



should all be placed in a wire-basket, and put into boiling water. Boil them two minutes and three-quarters precisely.

Lord Chesterfield said it was only necessary for him to see a person at table to tell if he were a gentleman. He must have had a fine opportunity for observation when boiled eggs were served. It seems nonsense (and it is nonsense) when I say that the fashionable world abroad and their imitators here consider it insufferably gauche to serve a boiled egg but in one stereotyped way, i. e., in the smallest of egg-cups. The top of the egg is cut off with a knife, and with a little egg-spoon, dipped into salt when necessary, the egg is eaten from the shell. I really can not see that it matters much whether an egg is eaten from an egg-glass, or in the little egg-cups from the shell, unless one prefers to be in the fashion, when it requires no more trouble.

Salt the water well; when it is simmering, drop lightly each broken egg from a saucer into it. Cook one egg at a time, throwing carefully with a spoon the water from the side over the egg, to whiten the top. When cooked just enough (do not let it get too hard), take out the egg with a perforated ladle, trim off the ragged pieces, and slip it on a small, thin piece of hot buttered toast, cut neatly into squares. When all are cooked, and placed on their separate pieces of toast, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over each one.

Some put into the boiling water muffin-rings, in which the eggs are cooked, to give them an even shape; they present a better appearance, however, cooked in the egg-poacher, illustrated among the cooking utensils. Poached eggs are nice introduced into a beef soup—one egg for each person at table; they are also nice served on thin, diamond-shaped slices of broiled ham instead of toast.

Delmonico serves poached eggs on toast, with sorrel sprinkled over the tops.