Jane Macdougall: How about eggs at The Bookless Club?

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There it was, shunted to the back of a shelf at the thrift store.

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It was only a few inches tall, taller than it was wide, but you couldn’t help but notice it. Primitive and elegant among abandoned Pyrex and CorningWare, he looked like a naval officer in full dress among ruffians. This one was white but was painted with a bouquet of flowers. He was beautiful. What gave it the military bearing of it was the shiny metal tam-o-shanter of a tightly screwed lid on top.

It was an egg coddler.

A wonderful little device that gently cooks an egg to perfection. They used to be a common feature of the breakfast table. You can now find them in thrift stores and on Etsy. This is how coddlers have fallen out of use: autocorrect still adjusts the spelling from coddler to codder. Codder doesn’t seem to have a dictionary definition, but it does take precedence over coddler.

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You’ve screwed up eggs before, haven’t you? You can go broke with overly easy, sunny, poached, and even fail-safe scrambled eggs in the blink of an eye. In fact, the difference between an omelette and scrambled eggs is about 45 seconds. One wrong move and it’s game over. But the cuddles are on your side. Coddlers are specially designed devices that protect you from unpleasant results. There are many things that I love about a cocdler as they almost guarantee a desirable result. When you consider all of that, it’s strange to think that they’ve fallen from grace.

Use a coddler to achieve an egg with the texture of a poached egg but without the watery consistency of a poached egg. It is ultra simple. The egg is cracked into the buttered porcelain container, the cheery lid sealed, and the device placed in a shallow pot of boiling water. Depending on how you like your eggs, it will be ready in about six minutes. And unlike a poached egg, you can take a peak and decide whether to continue.

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The classic practice of eating a spoiled egg was to dip toasty dots, usually called soldiers, into the pot. Others preferred to pour the contents onto buttered toast.

You can improvise a coddler using a mold. I was told that a saucer used as a lid doubles the finished product of the coddler. Small jars can also be similarly pressed into service.

No one knows when the first coddlers were made, but they became popular in Europe in the late 19th century. The fanciest mimes seem to come from Royal Worcester in Britain, and there are all sorts of collectors vying for early examples.

Eggs are endlessly fascinating to chefs. They are arguably the most versatile ingredients in the kitchen and appear in meals at any time of the day. Nutritionists hail them as the “perfect food,” largely because, despite being only 75 calories each, they contain all nine essential amino acids. Cookbooks are full of tips on how to boost various pillars of the egg. One chef recommends upping your scrambled eggs by adding a tablespoon of orange juice. Another swears that a quarter cup of sparkling wine adds a measurable kick to a two-egg scramble. Many cooks add a splash of vinegar to the poaching water. Some of the molecular gastronomes insist that brining scrambled eggs, salting them and letting them sit for 10 minutes improves the way they are plated. I can tell you that using a cast iron skillet and low heat gives a stellar result, but only if you barely move the eggs. A tablespoon of butter added to the middle is known to favorably affect the way eggs are prepared.

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From tamagoyaki, shakshuka, piperade to soufflés, there are many ways to answer the question “How do you like your eggs?” And that includes, “My eggs? I like them baked in a cake!

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former columnist for the National Post who lives in Vancouver. She will write in The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. To learn more about what Jane is up to, visit her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

how do you like the egg? Any tricks up the sleeve of your bathrobe?

Email your answers, not as an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at [email protected]. We will print some next week in this space.

Answers to last week’s question for readers:

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Do you have tricks to remember things? How is your memory these days??

• I have had a lousy memory going back to school days. I couldn’t memorize a poem. In high school and college, I played in folk groups, but only once did I sing solo. I couldn’t remember the lyrics. Just to broaden your view of theatre, the last 25 years of my career has been as an arts publicist, the Bard and Arts Club are outliers in having much larger budgets. Your average theater run (Rumble, Firehall, Touchstone and all the rookies) rehearses on average for 2-1/2 weeks for a 2-1/2 week run. What amazed me was that once the first show opens at night, some of the actors can start rehearsals during the day for their next shows. Oh!

Ellie O’Day

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• I think part of having a good memory is what you’re born with. I have an excellent memory for dates, I always do. For years, I thought people remembered things like me. If I can connect a date, maybe a birthday with something else, I will remember it for years, even if I am not close to that person. I am now 73 years old and I hope it continues for the rest of my life.

cute moore

• Memory? I remember? Long-term memory is there, but short-term memory is rapidly declining. There are tricks to remember: routine, notes to self, and lists, often duplicate lists. Leaving something out of place can help if you can remember why you left it out. Also, we now keep a hard cover notebook for things we need to remember. Until now, we still know where it is. Naming has become a problem for my spouse and me. Our daughter recently tiled the bathroom shower. We needed to buy, you know, the glue and the material that fills the spaces between the tiles. Fortunately, we can still remember who we are.

bonnie hamilton

• I try to exercise my memory, especially when shopping. I’ll usually shop at the store first with a list in my pocket. Once I’ve exhausted my memory bank and have often selected the items I want instead of the ones I need, which is especially true when I shop hungry, I’ll pull out the list. For a smaller quantity, I will give myself a number in my mind for the number of items needed. This technique is usually less accurate and I inevitably fall short. But hey, I need the exercise.

Bruce Shaw