For my first attempt, I poured a thin layer of heavy cream into a nonstick skillet and brought it to a boil over medium heat while thoroughly beating a few eggs and a pinch of salt. (Despite the ubiquitous warning that salting eggs before cooking will result in watery or “gray” eggs, I’ve found that salting eggs while beating produces moister and more evenly seasoned eggs.)
I let the cream reduce until it was completely broken up and caramelized before adding the eggs, stirring them until mostly cooked, then topped them off with a small drizzle of fresh cream to stop the cooking. The results weren’t great. Putting eggs in such a hot pan made some of the curds too firm, while the fat from the broken cream made them greasy.
I decided to skip the caramelization and see what would happen if I handled the eggs more gently. I started the same way, but this time, once the cream was simmering, I lowered the heat, poured in my eggs, and cooked them as I normally do, stirring slowly and steadily with a silicone spatula. The results were not significantly different from scrambled eggs I’ve made by combining cream with the eggs before cooking. That is, rich, dense and delicious, but not unique.
However, as I poured the eggs into the simmering cream, I was reminded of the Cantonese egg drop soup, an easy lunch I often make for my family. I drip beaten eggs in a thin, steady stream into barely simmering broth that has been lightly thickened with starch to the consistency of whipped cream. If you stir the eggs immediately after sprinkling, they will get an unpleasant consistency similar to curdled milk. The key to velvety smooth ribbons is to let them rest for 10 to 15 seconds before gently stirring them.
So what would happen if I used a similar technique with heavy cream instead of thickened stock?
As it turns out, applying the egg drop soup method to Western-style scrambled eggs isn’t a new idea. In 2006, chef Daniel Patterson published a recipe for poached scrambled eggs in DailyExpertNews Magazine in which he drops beaten eggs into a pot of boiling water – just like you do for egg drop soup. After they are set, he drains them in a fine-mesh sieve, a method similar to an old English buttered eggs recipe from the 1596 edition of “The Good Huswifes Jewell.” (In it, the author, Thomas Dawson, suggests hanging cooked scrambled eggs in a clean cloth “so the whey can come out”.)