Peel, core and slice some apples very thin. Heat 1 large tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan; put in the apples and let them steam until tender. Make an egg omelet batter; sweeten to taste and pour over the apples; let cook until set. Cover thickly with sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon. Serve hot with wine sauce.
The original assumes you already know how to build an omelet batter and a wine sauce, so those are the gaps worth filling. Quantities are left entirely to the cook.
- Scale itTwo medium apples and four eggs fill a 10-inch pan and serve two to three as dessert. The dish does not keep, so make only what will be eaten.
- The batterBeat 4 eggs with 2 tablespoons milk or cream and 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar. Some Austrian versions beat the whites separately and fold them in, which gives a puffier Schmarren-like result; either works.
- "Let them steam until tender"Cover the pan and cook the sliced apples over moderate heat for 5 to 8 minutes. Slices cut thin will collapse to sauce if pushed much past that, and the omelet then has nothing to sit on.
- Choose a firm appleA tart, firm variety such as Braeburn, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious holds its shape. Softer supermarket apples turn to puree in the butter.
- Setting the omeletOnce the egg is poured over, cook uncovered on low until the edges are firm and the top is barely wet, about 4 to 6 minutes, then either flip it or finish it under the broiler for a minute. Chasing a dry center on the stovetop overcooks the base.
- Wine sauceThe recipe does not say which kind; period wine sauces ranged from a butter-and-sugar sauce to a starch-thickened sweet wine sauce to a sabayon. For a sabayon, whisk 2 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons sugar and 1/3 cup white wine over a water bath until thick and foamy. Serve it warm; it separates if it sits.
- Butter measure"1 large tablespoonful" suggests a generous, heaped spoonful rather than a level one, so perhaps 15 to 20 g. Use enough to coat the pan well, since the sugar on top will encourage sticking if any batter runs down the sides.
Austrian and Bohemian cooking has a whole family of sweet pan-cooked egg dishes — Kaiserschmarrn, Apfelschmarren — in which eggs, a little sugar and fruit are cooked in butter and finished with cinnamon sugar, and eaten as a dessert or a substantial sweet supper rather than as breakfast. This entry sits in a book built as a calendar, one dish for each day of the year with a nation attached to it. Sweetened wine sauces and sabayons were common dessert sauces of the period, ladled over steamed puddings and fruit fritters. Cinnamon with cooked apple is old enough in Central European kitchens that no source gets credit for it.