Creamed eggs on toast
Creamed eggs on toast is an American breakfast dish.[1] It consists of toast or biscuits covered in a gravy[2] made from bechamel sauce and chopped hard-boiled eggs. The gravy is often flavored with various seasonings, such as black pepper, garlic powder, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, sherry, chopped parsley and/or chopped chives. The Joy of Cooking recommends making the bechamel with 1⁄2 cream and 1⁄2 chicken stock and adding capers or chopped pickle.[3] As with many other dishes covered in light-colored sauce, a sprinkle of paprika or cayenne is often added as decoration.
 Creamed eggs on toast, an American breakfast | |
| Course | Breakfast |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | South, Midwest |
| Serving temperature | Warm |
| Main ingredients | Hard-boiled eggs, cream sauce |
| Ingredients generally used | Toast |
| Variations | Creamed eggs on a biscuit |
The dish is sometimes used as a way to use up leftovers. Common additions include chopped ham, veal, chicken, lobster, cooked asparagus and peas.[4]
Variations include Eggs Goldenrod, made by reserving the yolks and sprinkling them over the dish after the cream sauce has been poured on the toast,[5] and Eggs à la Bechamel, substituting croutons fried in butter for the toast and poached or soft-boiled eggs for the hard-boiled eggs.[6] In this case, the cooked eggs are placed on the croutons and the sauce poured over both.
In many families this dish has become a traditional Easter brunch fare. The recipe was first discovered in Fanny Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896.
See also
- Biscuits and gravy
- Chipped beef on toast
- List of toast dishes
- List of bread dishes
- List of egg dishes
- Welsh rarebit
References
- Good Housekeeping. p. 435.
- Entertaining on the Jewish Holidays - Israela Banin. p. 36.
- Rombauer, Irma S.; Becker, Marion Rombauer (1975). Joy of Cooking (Enlarged and rev. ed.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. p. 342. ISBN 0-672-51831-7.
- Perkins, Wilma Lord (1965). The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (11th ed.). Little, Brown and Co. p. 102.
- Farmer, Fannie Merritt (1996). The Original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896 (100th anniversary ed.). [New York]: H.L. Levin Associates. p. 96. ISBN 0-88363-196-2.
- editor, Prosper Montagné ; American; Escoffier, Charlotte Turgeon; pref. by Robert J. Courtine; original preface by Auguste; Hunter, Philéas Gilbert; text translated from the French by Marion (1977). The new Larousse gastronomique : the encyclopedia of food, wine & cookery. New York: Crown Publishers. p. 344. ISBN 0-517-53137-2.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)