Some people have never had a hot, runny, seductive soft-boiled egg. That’s because they’re such a pain to peel when hot, that even most restaurants don’t offer them.

Soft-boiled eggs were popular in our family. Nana had a set of vintage silver-plated egg cups; Mom had ceramic cups.

The eggs were served with “toast soldiers” (photo #2): slices of toasted bread cut into half-inch vertical strips, for dipping into the yolk. (In the photo, the soldiers are topped with lots of yummy salmon caviar.)

Soft boiled eggs have long been popular among those who could afford the egg cups: Egg cups were found in the ruins of Pompeii.

No egg cups? Small ramekins, juice glasses, and even some cocktail glasses will work. You can also nestle the egg in rock salt (photo #3) or small pebbles.

You can even make origami egg cups (photo #5). Just follow the video below or this visual from Gathering Beauty.
 
 
TAKING THE TOP OFF THE EGG

 
We are incapable of doing either of these correctly. With the spoon, we end up with fragmented pieces of shell. With the knife, the force can end up spilling yolk.

Practice makes perfect, but we found a better solution: an egg cutter, also known as an egg topper. It’s an inexpensive gadget and takes up very little room in the gadget drawer.

 
 
EASTER EGGS

Dye The Eggs: Photo #1 shows how they do it at Petrossian.

Top With Caviar: For Easter or other festive occasions, top your eggs with affordable caviar: capelin, lumpfish, salmon, tobiko, trout or whitefish roe.

For bright colors, we’re partial to salmon caviar or colored and flavored whitefish roe. (For sturgeon caviar, we waive this suggestion.)

Check out the different types of caviar and roe* in our Caviar Glossary.
 
 
FOR SCRAMBLED EGGS

If you want to fill the eggshells with scrambled eggs, you need to sterilize the insides of the shells or else (far easier) buy pasteurized eggs, such as Davidson’s Safest Choice.

Here are instructions to sterilize the shells from Rem Cooks.

________________

*The Difference Between Roe And Caviar

All caviar is roe, the uncooked eggs of any fish. While caviar has traditionally referred only to sturgeon roe, the roe of many (or any) fish is now commonly called caviar. In the U.S., it is legally permissible to call any roe caviar as long as the fish is identified, e.g. salmon caviar.

As food writers, we prefer to use the latter with the fish identified, even if it is sturgeon caviar. There are enough different kinds of sturgeon caviar, that even confining the word to sturgeon requires a modifier: beluga caviar, Black Sea caviar, Iranian osetra caviar, farmed white sturgeon caviar, etc.

By the way, caviar is not a Russian word, nor is it used by Russian speakers. Khaviar, meaning eggs, is of Persian origin, found in the Iranian and Turkish languages. Russian speakers use the word ikroj (pronounced EEK-ruh, with a rolle “r”) for all roe, and use a modifier (beluga, salmon) to specify which type. Habitués of sushi bars will note that the Japanese adapted this word into ikura, salmon roe.

[2] Top a boiled egg, a toast finger, a half of a baby potato (photo © Le Coq Rico | NYC [now La Rotisserie]).

[3] No egg cups? Use rock salt (photo © Sturia Caviar).

[4] Or make origami egg cups, with these instructions from Gathering Beauty (photo © Gathering Beauty).

[5] How to cut the tops from the eggs. You can get a cracker/cutter on Amazon.

There are several origami egg cup tutorials on YouTube. This one is the slowest (i.e., easiest to follow).
 
 

[2] Don’t feel like stacking? Just place the ingredients on a plate, as in this recipe. Or, layer them in a glass dish. (photo © Live Naturally Magazine).

[3] At Raymi Peruvian restaurant in New York City, a Japanese accent is added via julienned nori (dried seaweed sheets), togarashi mayo for the chicken salad, and ponzu syrup. Here’s the recipe (photo © Star Chefs).

[4] Croquettes: the chicken is inside! Check out the recipe (photo © Sweet Cakes Toronto).

[5] Here, chicken salad is turned into an appetizer with a pretzel stick (photo © Piscomar Restaurant | Madrid).

It is served chilled or at room temperature as an appetizer or as a lunch entrée.

Make the mashed potatoes with purple Peruvian potatoes (photo #6), and you’ve got a dish that screams “Easter week!”

You can substitute other salads (crab, egg, shrimp, tuna) and add other touches as you wish. We’ve included some variations below.

The name of the dish comes from the Quechua* word kausay, which means “life” or “sustenance of life.” Potatoes originated in Peru and number hundreds of cultivars. They were the sustenance of life in pre-Hispanic Peru, as rice was in China.

Morada means purple, referring to the purple potatoes. As you can see in Photo #7 below, there are also blue potatoes.

The original dish was simply boiled potatoes eaten with slices of aji amarillo (the principal Peruvian chili). Meat was scarce in the Andes Mountains. Much of the cuisine was vegetarian.

This most basic recipe of boiled potatoes illustrates today’s tip: The simplest foods can be made more flavorful and appealing, with a few twists.

The recipe below is Adina, a modern Peruvian restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Peruvian cuisine is an interesting fusion, not just of Spanish and Inca cuisines, but of Japanese cuisine, from the immigration of Japanese laborers at the turn of the [20th] century. You’ll see how Japanese touches grace some of the variations.

This recipe came to us via Potato Goodness, the recipe website of Potatoes USA, the nation’s potato marketing and research organization.

> The history of potatoes.

> The different types of potatoes.
 
 
RECIPE: CAUSA MORADA, PERUVIAN CHICKEN SALAD

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until very tender, about 20 minutes. Let cool.

2. PEEL the potatoes and pass them through a food mill or ricer (or simply mash very finely) into a large bowl. Knead lightly with gloved‡ hands, slowly drizzling in oil, as needed, to a dough-like consistency. Add the lime juice and season to taste with salt. Refrigerate until cold and firm, about 2 hours.

3. PLACE the chicken, onion, carrot, and mint into a large saucepan, adding just enough water to cover. Bring to a slow boil. Cook until the chicken is fork tender and can be pulled apart, about 20 minutes.

4. TRANSFER the chicken to a medium bowl. Once cool enough to handle, shred with fingers or a fork. Mix in the mayonnaise, aji amarillo, celery, and red onion. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour.

5a. For individual servings, layer ring molds with potato mixture, then chicken mixture, then potato mixture. Refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

5b: For a single dish, use a 2-quart glass casserole. Layer the ingredients, as above. Refrigerate until ready to serve; let warm to room temperature first, as desired.

Color: Purple or blue potatoes add so much more punch to Causa Morada than white varieties. As another example, how about a yellow gazpacho, using yellow tomatoes and bell peppers instead of the conventional red?

Size: Turn a full dish or side into an appetizer: Causa Morada bites (chicken salad stuffed into baby potatoes) or gazpacho shots? Or gazpacho sorbet?

Format: Change the shape and purpose, like the plated Causa Morada in photo #2, the croquettes in photo #4, and the appetizers in photo #5. Can you turn it into a drink? You can make a Caprese Cocktail by reformatting the ingredients of Caprese Salad: a mix of tomato and lettuce juices, with a garnish of mozzarella balls on a pick.

Another ingredient: The avocado in photo #1 adds new personality to the dish. What about a surf and turf variation, adding something from the sea (scallops? shrimp?).

Crunch: If the dish has no crunch, add some. Anything from a side of jicama batons or radish slices to an artisan cracker or potato plantain chip on top, will do the trick. One of our secrets: Japanese rice cracker snack mix, which is also one of our favorite things to serve with wine and cocktails.

Sweetness: Add some fruit, minced into the chicken salad, grilled as an extra layer or garnish, or pureéd into a sauce.

Salty: Blend in olives or capers, for example.

Condiments: Add chutney; cornichons or gherkins; pickled vegetables; or relish to the plate.

Vegetables: For Causa Morada, some red color cherry or grape tomatoes, or some texture a bit of frisée or arugula salad.

Sauce: There are countless types of sauces for every dish. Sweet, savory, herbal, matching, contrasting.

Bread: Could bread or crackers enhance the dish? For example, Causa Morada could be served with toasts or flatbread on which to spread the soft layers. Consider what would enhance your recipe: anything from garlic crostini (garlic bread) to sesame breadsticks to

Garnish: Garnish can change the personality of a dish. Imagine Causa Morada topped with julienned nori (photo #3), honey peanuts, diced melon, and shoestring fried onions. For fun: a few Goldfish?

________________

*Quechua is the language of the Incas. It is still spoken by their ancestors in the Andes Mountains.

†You can substitute other fresh chile. If you don’t want to take the time to purée the chile, just add minced pieces to the chicken salad.

[6] Purple Peruvian potatoes (photo © Pompeian Olive Oil | Facebook).

[7] Blue Peruvian potatoes are harder to find, but you can buy seeds and grow your own (photo © Harmony Farms).

[8] Aji amarillo, the chile of Peru (photo © Peru Delights).

[1] A classic BLT. Here’s the recipe from Southern Living (photo © Southern Living).

[2] A lobster BLT. Here’s the recipe from How Sweet Eats (photo © How Sweet Eats).

[3] A turkey avocado BLT. Here’s the recipe from Culinary Hill (photo © Culinary Hill).

[4] A BLT with grilled pineapple and sriracha mayo. Here’s the recipe from Half Baked Harvest (photo © Half Baked Harvest).

[5] What we now know as a BLT began as a “club sandwich” in London mens’ clubs. We’d call it a turkey BLT. It’s shown here with spicy fries from Kiwilimón (photo © Kiwilimón).

[6] Don’t want the bread? Have a BLT salad. Here’s the recipe from Southern Living (photo © Southern Living).

[7] Gazpacho with a BLT garnish, from Munchery, a fine food delivery service (photo © Munchery).

[8] A grilled avocado BLT burger. Here’s the recipe from the California Avocado Commission (photo © California Avocado Commission).

April is National BLT Month; July 22nd is National BLT Day.

The bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise, often served as a triple-decker sandwich on toast, is one of America’s favorite sandwiches (and a U.K. favorite, too).

While toast, bacon and lettuce have been enjoyed at table since Roman times, two of the other ingredients took a bit longer to come together.

> The history of the club sandwich is below.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE BLT

Although its ingredients have existed for thousands of years, there is little evidence of BLT sandwich recipes before 1900. The first known mention of a BLT sandwich appears in a 1903 Ladies Home Journal. That same year, the Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book featured a recipe for a club sandwich included bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and a slice of turkey sandwiched between two slices of bread.

According to Merriam‑Webster, the first known print appearance of the acronym BLT is 1950. Historical accounts suggest the abbreviation emerged as diner shorthand during the 1940s.

The BLT became popular after World War II due to the rapid expansion of supermarkets, which made its ingredients, especially tomatoes, available year-round.

See below for creative modern variations to the classic B.L.T.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF EACH BLT INGREDIENT

The oldest of the five ingredients is bread.

The art of using yeast to leaven bread was mastered by the ancient Egyptians. Loaves of bread presented more culinary opportunities than flatbreads.

Then came lettuce.

Lettuce was first cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, who turned it from a weed into a food plant as early as 2680 B.C.E. It was taken to Greece and Rome, and by 50 C.E., many types of lettuce were grown there.

> The history of bread.
 
 
Next, the bacon.

Wild boar meat was cured be smoking, salting and drying since Paleolithic times. (The Paleolithic, also known as the Stone Age, extended from 750,000 B.C.E. or 500 B.C.E. to approximately 8,500 B.C.E. [source]).

Pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 B.C.E. But there was nothing identifiable as modern bacon.

The modern bacon we know and love began to appear in the mid-1700s.

Previously, the word “bacon” referred to all pork, then the back meat, then all cured pork. British farmers who noticed that certain breeds of pig had much plumper sides, engendered a movement so that “bacon” was finally distinguished as the side of pork, cured with salt.

Here are the history of bacon, and the different types of bacon.

> The history of bacon.
 
 
Next, tomatoes.

Tomatoes were brought to Europe from the New World at the end of the 16th century. But not as food.

The original tomatoes were like yellow cherry tomatoes. Considered poisonous (they’re members of the Nightshade family), they were enjoyed as houseplants.

Tomatoes weren’t eaten for two more centuries, and then only because of a famine in Italy in the early 1800s.

They arrived in England in the 16th century (see the history of tomatoes).

> The history of tomatoes.
 
 
Finally, mayonnaise.

At the same time, there was no mayo for the BLT. The original mahónnaise sauce was invented in 1756, but it was not until years later that it evolved into what is recognized as modern mayo.

The great French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) lightened the original recipe by blending the vegetable oil and egg yolks into an emulsion, creating the mayonnaise that we know today.

> The history of mayonnaise.
 
 
But no one had yet invented the sandwich!

It took John Montagu, Fourth Earl Of Sandwich, to invent the eponymous food in 1762 (history of the sandwich).

A marathon gambler, he would not leave the gaming table to eat, so asked for meat and a couple of pieces of bread. He could throw dice with one hand and eat with the other, no knife or fork required. (Sushi was invented for the same reason.)

The first sandwiches were gambling food: something easy to eat without utensils. Fancier sandwiches evolved, but it took more than 100 years for someone needed to invent the club sandwich.
 
 
THE INVENTION OF THE CLUB SANDWICH

While tea sandwiches with bacon, lettuce and tomato were served during Victorian times, a search of 19th and early 20th century American and European cookbooks points to the club sandwich as the progenitor of the BLT.
According to Food Timeline, most food historians concur that the club sandwich was probably created in the U.S. during the late 19th/early 20th century.

No printed record has been found to date, so the where and who remain a matter of culinary debate. The reigning theory points to the Saratoga Club in Saratoga, New York

The club sandwich was very popular and spread to other mens’ clubs. A printed recipe appeared for the first time in the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book. It called for bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and a slice of turkey sandwiched between two slices of bread (no one has yet discovered when the third slice of bread was added).

So, violà: the club sandwich, a turkey BLT (photo #5), hits menus and cookbooks. When no turkey was desired, the “club sandwich without turkey” became a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich—later shortened to BLT.

There’s an unsubstantiated story of a man who came home hungry after his family and servants had retired. He searched the pantry for a snack, deciding to make some toast. As he looked in the ice chest for butter for the toast, he found cooked bacon, chicken, a tomato and mayonnaise.

He made a sandwich and was so happy with his creation that he mentioned it to friends at his club. They had the kitchen recreate it, and it went onto the menu as the “club sandwich.”
 
Was it the Saratoga Club? Did an unnamed man invent it? Maybe yes, maybe no.
 
 
THE BLT TODAY

The BLT on toast has been recreated with many variations. The most prominent may be the BLTA, bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado.

But why stop there? Create your own signature BLT from these ingredients! Consider:

 
 
MORE BLT RECIPE IDEAS

Cocktails

 
Not A Sandwich

 
 
PARTY IDEAS

Get together a group and assign a different version of BLT to each. Make a whole meal of it…perhaps with chocolate-covered bacon for dessert.

Don’t restrict your thinking: A Cobb Salad is a BLT salad with some additions (avocado, blue cheese and chicken).
 
 
MORE TO CELEBRATE

April is National BLT Month and July 22nd is National BLT Day. But also take a look at:

> All the bacon holidays.

> All the sandwich holidays.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] A hot, hearty, nutritious breakfast (photo courtesy Good Eggs). [2] You can buy bone broth in multiple or individual serving sizes (photo courtesy Appetite For Health).

Over the last couple of years, bone broth—made from the bones of beef or chicken—has become the nutrition du jour, for lunch, dinner, and for breaks during the day.

How about for breakfast? In Asia, soup is a breakfast standard.

It’s hot, hearty, nourishing comfort food.

And you can make it with whatever you like.

We adapted this recipe from one by Good Eggs.

You can substitute whatever broth you prefer (miso, pho, etc.). You can buy the packaged broth, and even individual portions of it (such as with Nona Lim’s and Pacific brands).

If you have other vegetables in the crisper, or a piece of leftover chicken, just cut or shred them and toss them in.

If you’d like tofu instead of ramen, ditto.

And if you’d like to have the broth for lunch or a snack, no one will question your judgment.
 
 
RECIPE: BREAKFAST SOUP WITH BONE BROTH

Ingredients For 3 Servings

1. HEAT the broth, diluting with water as desired. When the broth boils, add the ramen and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the greens and scallions, and any extra vegetables or proteins.

2. SIMMER for another 3-5 minutes, until the greens are bright and tender but still have texture.

3. BOIL a small pot of water, add the eggs and simmer for 7 minutes and 20 seconds. Remove from the water and place in an ice bath. Peel them when they are touchable.

4. PORTION the broth into bowls, along with halved egg. Garnish with herbs as desired.

Macaroons are a delicious cookie year-round. The originals were invented by Italian monks from ground almonds. The name derives from the Italian maccherone.

Italian Jews adopted the cookie for eight-day observation of Passover, because it was free of restricted ingredients like flour and leavening.

The macaroon was introduced to other European Jews and became popular as a year-round sweet. Over time, coconut was added to the ground almonds and, in certain recipes, replaced them.

Macaroons arrived in France in 1533 with the pastry chefs of Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henri II.

But the French macaron, a meringue sandwich, was centuries away.

The concept was invented by Pierre Desfontaines Ladurée, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, had the idea to join two meringues and fill them with ganache.

Here’s more history of macaroons and macarons.

MAKE MACAROONS FOR PASSOVER

You can make them from scratch, or pick up a box or two (or three) of King Arthur Flour’s Coconut Macaroon Cookie Mix.

It’s $5.95 per box, yielding approximately 2 dozen macaroons; and it’s certified kosher.

They’re super-easy to make: Just add water to the mix, scoop them into balls and bake.

If you love coconut, this is your cookie. Ever so slightly toasty on the outside, moist and chewy inside.

They’re as good or better than any from-scratch recipe we’ve had.

While the ingredients themselves do not have gluten, the mix is not certified gluten-free because it hasn’t been tested for the presence of gluten.

VARIATIONS

You can dress them up macaroons by:

 
BAKING TIPS

Use parchment so the white bottoms don’t get too dark or scorch, and reduce the oven temperature to 350°F,

Even so, watch them closely as they bake.

If the mix is too dry, before baking, add another 1/4 cup of water (or as needed).

All photos courtesy King Arthur Flour.