Your “should look like” scrambled eggs look undercooked. #3 looks just about right, and damned delicious to boot.
(I’m a Californian who grew up in Taiwan. Dunno how that affects things.)
And as for Hershey’s, I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone eating a bar. I thought this was a kids’ candy, as most of the adults I know buy fancier (darker, purer, or at least shiner-packaged) chocolate.
They’re actually cooked the same amount, but they have been continuously stirred so they haven’t formed chunks.
Back to the OP, the people in some countries I’ve been to are absolutely dumbfounded almost to the point of noncomprehension of the regional variety, which has been touched on in this thread to some extent.
Folks of my parents’ generation in countries that were sort of … homogenous, I suppose, such as Poland and Hungary, just can’t grok that New England food is almost as different from Southern cookin’ as Italian food is from Chinese. The U.S. is a melting pot in ways not encountered in some parts of the world, but it’s also so freakin’ vast that the regionalisms come across almost as different nationalities. It’s difficult to explain, for example, how clam chowder, fried okra, and Jell-O salad could come from the same single country.
Well, the continual stirring probably impacts the ultimate solidity since the skin of each would-be chunk never has time to fully cook and form. Well-cooked eggs aren’t runny like that, at least not on the outside.
Even a completely homogenous egg mixture, heated thoroughly, comes out solid (think microwaved egg-solution blobs, if you’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of trying them).
Is jello salad just jello with fruit mixed in? Sounds the jelly part of a trifle.
The scrambled eggs in Ascenray’s pic don’t look at all runny to me.
Sometimes creamy additives like sour cream or whipped cream are blended in, but today, primarily, yes. Sometimes its quite good - a couple years ago I went to a holiday dinner where a version made with the seasonal cranberry flavor, cooked cranberries, and walnuts was offered. it was pretty and tasty in small servings as a pre-dessert.
However, not too far into our past Jello Salad could be savory and even contain meat. At one time they made a “celery” flavor!!!:eek: If you think your brain can contain the horror, witness this 1952 ad promoting a jello salad apparently made of…
(spoilered because it is too dreadful for innocent minds to contemplate)
lime jello, pimento olives, celery, and cheese chunks. Where’s the puke smiley when you need it!?
Click at your own risk:
I’d like to tell myself its only an artifact of wartime palates being starved for sugar (Jello was never rationed and its 80% sugar) but actually, the vile history goes back much further: check out this recipe from a 1928 promotional cookbook:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adelaidevasilek/2186562082/in/set-72157603691586636
Oh, the humanity.
Funny thing about “scrambled” eggs is that, even as a professional cook with years of breakfast experience, I’ve always understood the “scrambled” part to simply refer to the fact that the yolk and white are “scrambled” together, not to the cooking procedure. To me, an “omelet” is a very specific thing. It’s not just scrambled eggs that haven’t been broken up, it’s scrambled eggs prepared in a specific manner. Pouring scrambled eggs into a pan and letting them sit until they’re cooked through isn’t an omelet.
Could one of you Brits explain exactly what a “trifle” is?
I’d say “wet” rather than “runny”.
Think of it as the difference between ice cream on one hand and a carton of milk kept in the freezer on the other.
They’re both equally frozen, but the ice cream has been continuously stirred during the freezing process.
Ice cream comes out creamy because the cream hasn’t been allowed to freeze together into one large piece.
In scrambled eggs, each little bit of egg is fully cooked, but it hasn’t been allowed to form a solid piece with the bits around it, so it’s creamy instead of chunky.
I’ve witnesses the horror of cabbage and carrots embedded in sweetened gelatin.
Yes, root beer’s been here in Thailand for a very long time. (The A&W shop in Siam Square has been there for decades.) Mirinda brand sold in the stores in cans and bottles is much sweeter though.
It’s funny that you describe it that way, because to me ice cream isn’t at all as “equally frozen” as a block of milk, any more than a tub of liquid nitrogen could be considered as “equally frozen” as a tub of water ice at the same temperature. (Why different ice creams freeze differently)
Likewise, with eggs, it’s not just the amount of heat applied, but how that heat is transferred to the egg. If you keep stirring it, each would-be surface has less contact time with the pan and doesn’t come out as cooked.
Whether it’s “wet” or “runny” seems a matter of semantics, but I don’t see how you could consider liquidy eggs as fully cooked as solid omelette-chunks.
And my point isn’t that there is a right or wrong way to make scrambled eggs, but that there are individual preferences in how we like them prepared that may or may not be linked to cultural differences.
Trifle is a layered dessert. To me, it’s a base of custard (set or somewhat runny) followed by a layer of jelly (jello) with fruit and bits of sponge cake in it, all topped with whipped cream. That’s how I’ve made it in the past - I’m not a big dessert fan and haven’t made trifle for years.
But I just went looking for recipes; some of them are baffling and don’t even include jelly (like this one on the BBC food website. Several of their other trifle recipes use jam).
What’s consistent is three layers: custard/jam or jelly + fruit and cakey stuff/cream bit.
But I’m not even sure if your custard is the same as ours, since several other basic food terms are different.
If you’re stirring the scrambled eggs but not stirring the omelette, then wouldn’t the inner parts of the omelette be cooked less? So scrambled eggs are actually ‘more’ cooked overall.
I suspect some of this is simply “false advertising.” Many (most?) brands of whole canned tomatoes here show unpeeled tomatoes on the label but inside the can the tomatoes are peeled. In fact I can’t think of any brands of canned tomatoes that aren’t peeled.
I’ll take that then. Trifle is a holiday dessert made up of layers of cake, fruit, jelly, custard and cream. According to Wikipedai it dates from the fourteenth century.
The trifle I grew up with is made in a large bowl. The first layer is swiss roll (sponge roll with jam) or “trifle sponges” which actually aren’t as nice. Next is a tin of fruit of some kind and all that was then drenched in jelly of a flavour compatible with the fruit. Alcohol, usually sherry could be added at this point. After the jelly was set and cooled in the fridge came a layer of cold custard, another British thing, basically a sweet thick vanilla sauce, but pale yellow, rather than white. Finally some squirty cream and sprinkles and it’s good to go.
Posh trifle would use the trifle sponges and just have the fruit, no jelly.
Supermarkets sell their own versions of trifle, including chocolate trifle which has no fruit. However I make a chocolate trifle with fruit which is yummy. I use swiss roll, a tin of strawberries and top it with chocolate angel delight – a creamy, airy, instant pudding which you whip up with milk.
Now I’ll sit back and wait for other Brits to tell me where I’ve got it wrong and a proportion of everyone else to say “Eeeouw”.
Not wrong just different: I always thought the booze went into the cake.
Trifle is so wrong, but it tastes so right.
I wondered the same thing and frankly I’m not sure. That’s why I said “at least not [runny] on the outside”. It’s possible that chunkier, omelette-styled scrambled eggs are better cooked only on the outside, with the insides less cooked, for the same average overall cooked-ness as a stirred scrambled egg. It’s also possible that leaving it unstirred will result in better heat distribution overall since you’re not adding as much air into the mix and you’re not exposing as much heated egg surface area to evaporative cooling.
As fascinating as this question may be, I’m afraid I’m just not a galline oviprotein thermal degradation specialist. Nor am I a very observant cook.
I just like my scrambled eggs hard, dammit.
Ah - the posh trifles with no jelly would be explain the baffling recipes I found.
And you’re right, it’s cake/fruit/jelly (I’ve mostly seen them mixed together, though the cake as a separate layer makes sense too) then custard, then cream.
These days most people probably buy them ready-made. There are certainly enough of them at the supermarket. Though IIRC the shop-bought ones usually leave out the sponge - is that right? I can’t eat them any more myself (mild dairy intolerance).
A base of custard? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a trifle made that way- it’s always been jelly on the bottom.
Anyway, all the trifle definitions have missed a vital ingredient- the sherry in the jelly. Enough to get the kids a bit tiddly, but “it’s only trifle, it’s fine!” 
It does, doesn’t it. Whether you pour the booze straight onto the cake or add it to the jelly/fruit it all ends up soaked into the cake in the end 