When I was in Suffolk the other day the pub I was staying in, the Anchor at Walberswick, included among its splendid breakfast menu Elizabeth David’s scrambled egg (above)
I didn’t have time to ask the chef Sophie Dorber what was special about it and couldn’t find it in any of my Elizabeth David books at home but finally tracked down the recipe on Google Books which has an online copy of French Provincial Cooking.
The secret is taking out one white in every four eggs you use which accounts for the unusually deep yellow colour. She also adds “a very large lump of butter’ before she adds the eggs and another once they start to thicken then takes the pan off the heat once what she describes as the ‘characteristic granules’ begin to appear. Finished off in the residual heat it makes for a softer, creamier scrambled egg. She finishes by saying, in typically crisp fashion, that ‘eggs for scrambling must be of the most absolute freshness’. And also ‘very well beaten’ before you put them in the pan.
What’s your favourite way of making scrambled egg. Do you agree or disagree with Elizabeth David (if one dares say one disagrees which such a goddess).