Odds and Ends.

From time to time, as I browse old cookery books and other sources, I come across unusual ideas for using up ordinary, everyday ingredients. Usually, at the time I am on a specific search mission and do not want to get side-tracked, but the recipes are too good or too interesting to pass over, so I toss them quickly into my computer or my head. The trick then, of course, is to find them again – an especially tricky problem if they are in my head, where the folder and file system is not so visible.

This week I do want to find some of them again, to share with you. I thought we would have a week of stories about odds and ends of ingredients. 

Have you ever hard-boiled too many eggs? I have. Sure, they will keep for a while in the fridge, but much as one likes them, a diet of egg sandwiches and egg salad pales somewhat after several days. There are other well-known ideas too: devilled eggs, Scotch eggs, the very old tradition of eggsauce with fish, and the almost infamous Anglo-Indian concept of curried egg (with apple.) I would never have come up with the idea of using hard-boiled eggs to make a cheesecake, however, but the following recipe shows how it can be done.

Egg Cheese-cakes.

Twelve eggs, boiled hard and rubbed through a sieve while hot, with half a pound of butter; then add half a pound of pounded loaf sugar, half a pound of currants, and a little nutmeg. Brandy may be added, which flavours them nicely; or, if preferred, a few drops of essence of lemon or almonds.

The Peterson magazine Vols. 55-56 (Philadelphia, 1869)

Quotation for the Day.

Let me tell you, sisters, seeing dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything I've had to deal with in politics.
Ann Richards