Book of Days Tales

Today is the birthday (1738) of Sir Frederick William Herschel, KH, FRS, German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and minor composer. He was born in Hanover and followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, before emigrating to Britain at age 19. He became famous for his discovery of the planet Uranus, along with two of its major moons (Titania and Oberon), and also discovered two moons of Saturn. In addition, he was the first person to discover the existence of infrared radiation.  He was also a musician and composed a number of symphonies, organ pieces, and other works.  Being rather derivative and lackluster, these works have largely been forgotten except by enthusiasts.

Written in 1747, Hannah Glasse’s (1708–1770) The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy represents one of the most important reference points for culinary practice in England during the latter half of the 18^th century and the beginning of the 19^th.  In the introduction she writes:

A Frenchman in his own country will dress a fine dinner of twenty dishes, and all genteel and pretty, for the expence he will put an English lord to for dressing one dish. But then there is the little petty profit.  I have heard of a cook that used six pounds of butter to fry twelve eggs; when every body knows (that understands cooking) that half a pound is full enough, or more than need be used: but then it would not be French. So much is the blind folly of this age that they would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!

Here is a delightful recipe from the book:

A ragoo of eggs

BOIL twelve eggs hard, take off the shells, and with a little knife very carefully cut the white a cross long-ways, so that the white may be in two halves, and the yolk whole. Be very careful neither to break the whites, nor yolks, take a quarter of a pint of pickled mushrooms chopped very fine, half an ounce of truffles and morels, boiled in three or four spoonfuls of water, save the water, and chop the truffles and morels very small, boil a little parsley, chop it fine, mix them together with the truffle-water you saved, grate a little nutmeg in, a little beaten mace, put it into a sauce-pan with three spoonfuls of water, a gill of red wine, one spoonful of catchup, a piece of butter, as big as a large walnut, rolled in flour, stir all together and let it boil. In the mean time get ready your eggs, lay the yolks and whites in order in your dish, the hollow parts of the whites uppermost, that they may be filled; take some crumbs of bread, and fry them brown and crisp, as you do for larks, with which fill up the whites of the eggs as high as they will lye, then pour in your sauce all over, and garnish with fry’d crumbs of bread. This is a very genteel pretty dish, if it be well done.

I took a shot at this recipe using what I had on hand, some years ago. Truffles and morels were in short supply in my pantry, so I made do with some rich brown fresh mushrooms.  By “catchup” Glasse means a rich and spicy mushroom sauce in vinegar which you can still find in gourmet stores or online (or make yourself). I used a Chinese mushroom sauce back then, but I now can use English mushroom ketchup.  I am not sure how to fry breadcrumbs “as you do for larks” so I just browned them in a dry skillet.  Cutting the eggs was a challenge in that I could not keep the yolks whole – they fell in half even though I was careful cutting the whites.  A sauce of mushrooms and nutmeg does go well with eggs, and the breadcrumbs add a toasted note and a slight crunch. I ate them cold and hot – delicious both ways.