First World War eggs

Has this ever happened to you? You wake up in the morning and it's time to have the same old eggs for breakfast again. End the monotony with this World War I era baked omelette recipe that I stumbled across in the American Journal of Nursing. September 1918. War recipes for invalid cookery by Alice Urkhart Fuel of Los Gats, California. First thing she says is separate an egg, but I think it's better to prepare your baking vessel first and to get the oven heating. A whole egg will fit into a small ramkin like this, and it'll bake up tall like a sule. It's very pretty, but it's hard to eat without spilling. So, I prefer a wider ramkin, but any small oven safe container will do. Alice says to grease the dish. I'm doing so with butter, but you could use oil, cooking spray all the way up the sides because it's going to puff up. Now, Miss Alice, I will crack the egg into a bowl suitable for beating. And I will carefully lift out the yolk, which is my favorite way of separating eggs these days. If it's a fresh egg, you might have to pinch off the white that's sticking. Down it goes. Stash the yolk someplace safe. The recipe doesn't call for it, but I will put in a shake of cream of tartar, an acidic byproduct of wine that makes egg foams fluffier and less likely to collapse. Oh, nice, mister. It's so much easier to just eyeball measurements. Well, if you'd used an eighth of a teaspoon measure, you would not be trying to fish out the excess right now. You could use a power tool to beat this, but I'll just use a whisk this morning. Beating egg whites by hand is not so hard. Whipping cream by hand is really hard because it takes way more total strokes. But after 2 minutes of me getting my aggression out on these eggs, we're almost there. Any peaks? No. Beat the white until stiff, nurse Alice says. So, we want to see a peak left when we pull the whisk out. Like that. Season with salt and pepper, she says, but go really easy on the salt. This is just one tiny egg. Plus, I used salted butter already. Stir that up. And this is the kind of foam that's going to start collapsing almost immediately. So, that's why I greased the dish and I heated the oven in advance. In it goes. Nurse Alice says to make a hollow nest in the center. In this center, put a small piece of butter. Then carefully slide the yolk from the saucer into the center of the white. Check, Miss Alice. Season with pepper, salt, and butter, she says. I've never heard butter referred to as a seasoning, and I'm not sure we need more of it, but I will scatter on some thyme from the garden. Look how gorgeous that is. And we haven't even baked it yet. She doesn't give a temperature, so I'm doing 350 Fahrenheit, 180 C. I wonder how that became like the default oven temperature. That'll take about 8 minutes. Just enough time to make a cup of trade coffee. the sponsor of this video. Trade is the number one coffee destination here in the US. They sent me a new mug. Sweet. They also send me freshly roasted coffee from more than 50 of the top roasters in the country. I'm a huge coffee drinker, but I'm not an obsessive, so I don't really know what all is out there and what I might like. That's why I appreciate the quiz at drinktrade.com/regusia. I tell them that I like lighter roasts. I like whole bean instead of preg ground. I can pay per bag or I can get the subscription and never run out of coffee again. They mail me new and interesting stuff suited to my tastes. Every bag is roasted to order and that level of freshness is both noticeable and rare in the coffee market. Trade's prices are on par with the grocery brands, but the quality is just far superior. Right now, Trade is exclusively offering my people 50% off a one-month trial at drinktrade.com/regusia. That's drinkt r a d.com/regusia for 50% off your one month trial. Thank you, trade. All right. Miss Alice says to bake in a hot oven until the white begins to brown and the yolk is set. I am not a World War I conscript suffering from Spanish flu. So, I do not want my yolk set. I want to see it jiggle when I nudge the dish. A pudding-like jiggle indicates a runny yolk like I want. So, we are done. Grab my coffee. You could obviously do two eggs side by side or like a whole dozen eggs in a big casserole dish. Here's how I like to eat it. You break off a bread-like chunk of meringue and then you pierce the yolk releasing a river of sauce through which you can drag your chunk of white and that is legit delicious. It honestly kind of feels like running your toast through egg yolk. So, this would be a great option for those fighting today's war on carbs. or as nurse Alice wrote, "This is an attractive looking dish and makes a nice change when it is necessary for a patient to have eggs frequently." Thank you, nurse.