Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
"Some regionalisms from a half-century ago have gone out of use," says Joan Houston Hall, the chief editor of DARE. "Dropped egg, for instance, was a strongly New England term for a poached egg. But at that time, most of the speakers who used the term were over 60 years old, so I suspect that we would find very few instances if we were to ask the question again."
Actually, the entire NPR story is kinds interesting. But if they're talking about dropped egg, perhaps dippy egg is fair game for discussion. I first heard thye term dippy egg from my first wife's mother, Beelzebub. She had the intelligence of, not a bag of hammers, but a bag of hillbilly hammers. No, I have no idea what a hillkbilkly hammer would be like, but Beelzebub was both stupid and illiterate. If you haven't figured it out already, a dippy eggs was a fried egg with a runny yolk. It could be "over light", or sunny-side up (white not cooked through) or over easy (white cooked, but yolk slightly congealed.
I wouldn't have thought much about it, other than trying to get my son to ay "over light", which was how he liked his eggs, buut then I started hearing people order dippy eggs, sitting art the counter in Waffle House. Apparently, it's not just as thing for Beelzebub.
Is it regional? Never heard it in Wisconsin or Ohio, just in central Indiana and in Lancaster PA (which is a tourist town, so maybe that ought not count.) But Urban Dictionary says it's common in Pittsburgh. The ngram viewer says there aren't enough data to graph, but tyhere are 120,000 google hits. Wikipedia, that repository of unreliable information, says the phrase is common among the Pennsylvania dutch and Marylanders. Sightings, anyone?
(Back to the radio story - what other name IS there for a hall tree? It's not a clothes rack. It's an upright standard with hooks on all sides for hangng clothes, as opposed to a rack where clothes may be folded and stacked. And milk isn't garlicky only in Virginia. Cows on fresh pasture love to eat wild allium, whether it be onions, garlic, chives or scallions, and when they do, it flavors their milk. But it's only really a problem in the spring.)
I've never heard the expression "dippy egg," but I can guess why it's called that. I grew up in northern Indiana among rural Mennonites, and have lived in Georgia for 30+ years, so you'd think I'd have been in contexts where it would occur; maybe I should have eaten at Waffle House more often. But if a dippy egg is "a fried egg with a runny yolk," then (based on how I learned from my father how to love eating fried eggs), I'd think it would be called that because you dip a corner of your buttered toast into the yolk and eat it. Messy, undignified, but unbelievably tasty.
As for a hall tree, I've heard it called a hat rack and I think a coat rack or maybe a coat tree. Technically, I suppose, it's not a rack; but then, technically it's not a tree either. 😉
As long as we're already in the vicinity, why are shoe trees called shoe trees? There's nothing even remotely tree-like about them.
(Given the recent trend towards overcooking eggs, I've taken to ordering mine "runny-side up". It doesn't always work as intended; I still get yolks cooked to the point of chalky powderiness, but at least some places, including Waffle House, can get it right.)
Maybe it's from dealing with binary trees. but I have no problem with shoe trees being trees. It's not a vertical log, but the essence, that being leavesw/nodes at the end of branches, is there.
Two branches on each tree, metal trunk on these, toe and eel of shoe are the leaves.nodes. Yep, I'd say they are trtees, although an arborist may mot agree.
Some people sneer at Waffle House, but not me. I think it's that any 24-hour restaurant is going to attract people who are awake at night, and sleep disturbances are associated with various mental illnesses, although which is the cause and which is the effect, I'm not sure if anyone knows. But they tend to train heir cooks well, and their cooks get a LOT of practice. Cooks will tell you that eggs are incredibly difficult to cook well. Part of it is they get rubbery if they ae cooked too fasy. In France, and in MY kitchen, eggs are kept at room temperature. Pennsylvania wants eggs to be refrigerated from the time they are laid until they are cooked; don't know about other states.
I do well with over light, with over easy (egg solid, but not broken), scrambled, hard-boiled (I don't boil at all, I bake at 160 F and they are incredibly creamy) but I have nev er mastered one-eyed sailors; the bread burns. I've not cooked, nor ecven tasted soft-boiled eggs or shirred egg. Fritz Brenner, in Rex SAtout's Nero Wolfe series, makes eggs in brown butter; Archie says people can't imagine taking 20 minutes to fry an egg, until they taste Freitz's. Vivian Howard on A Chef's Life in one of many now serving pizza with a fried egg atop it, which sounds horrid; an egg requires low temperatures to not be rubbery, and pizza requires high temperatures not to be soggy, so do they abuse the egg, the pizza or both? But 2 dozen large eggs is three pounds, and if you buy undersized eggs, the price per pound is even less; it's incredible how so tasty a food is so affordable.
So now that worship of Waffle House and the egg has concluded, somebody needs to play a postlude.
deaconB said
I have nev er mastered one-eyed sailors; the bread burns.
This thread may give you a few more names of this fine delicacy.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)