HFF 3.9 Savory

The Challenge: Something savory

The Recipe: Savory or Ragout Eggs from Mrs. Hale's New Cook Book, with pork forcemeat from the same.

The Date/Year and Region: 1857, Philadelphia

How Did You Make It: Very small scale. I hard-boiled two eggs. While they were cooking, I prepared the forcemeat by grinding up ~2 Tbsp of left-over ham and 3 small sage leaves in the mortar and pestle. I also mixed together 1 Tbsp of bread crumbs, 1/8 tsp of salt, 1/16 tsp each of ground allspice and black pepper. When the eggs were done, I peeled them and cut them in half, then scooped out the yoke and ground it with the ham and sage. When that was smooth, I worked it into the bread crumb mixture, then shaped the forcemeat into balls, placed one in each egg hollow, and fried them lightly in lard. 

Time to Complete: Thirty minutes once the water boiled.

Total Cost: $1.79 for the new sage starts. All food on hand already.

How Successful Was It?: It tastes pretty good. It reminds me of the chicken croquettes ('leftover meat ground up with spices and fried'), though I prefer the chicken. I would make these again for historic demos, especially if future research clears up my lingering questions.

How Accurate Is It?: I took some liberties, starting with adding ham to a forcemeat meant for stuffing ham. In fairness, the cookbook mentions forcemeat frequently, but rarely describes a particular set of ingredients (and the only ham-containing one I could find was for stuffing veal; it also looked less interesting).  I also assumed that the eggs should be pan fried, and not breaded. The receipt doesn't give details, and I need to know more about the assumptions a 19th century cook would make in order to assess my guess. I'd also love some info on shaping and plating. Also, I skipped the gravy, but without gravy was basically the other serving suggestion.

Savory eggs, garnished with parsley and winter savory.