Boil young tender leeks in salted water; let drain. Chop to a fine mince and fry in hot butter. Add 6 well-beaten eggs, sprinkle with salt and pepper and fold into an omelet and serve on a hot dish.
A three-line omelet with no quantities beyond the eggs. The proportions are yours to set, but the leeks want more attention than the text gives them.
- QuantitiesSix eggs makes a large flat omelet serving three to four, or two folded omelets in a 9-inch pan. Two medium leeks, white and pale green only, is about right for that many eggs.
- Wash the leeks firstThe recipe assumes it. Split them lengthways and rinse between the layers before boiling; grit trapped in the sheaths will not come out in the pot and will ruin the texture.
- Boil, then dryYoung leeks need only 4-6 minutes in salted water. Drain them hard and press out the water in a towel, otherwise the butter will spit and the finished omelet will weep.
- The hinge is the fryingFry the minced leek in butter until it stops steaming and just begins to colour at the edges. This is where the flavour comes from; wet, pale leek gives a bland omelet.
- Adding the eggsThe eggs go into the pan with the leeks, so cook over moderate heat, not high. Pull the set edges in, tilt to let the raw egg run under, and fold while the centre is still slightly loose.
- SeasoningSalt the eggs, not the pan, and season lightly since the leeks were boiled in salted water.
- Serving"A hot dish" is meant literally: warm the plates. An omelet on a cold plate goes flabby in under a minute.
Leeks and eggs is a long-standing cheap supper in northern Europe, and the attachment of the leek to Scotland here is loose at best. The leek belongs more firmly to Welsh national symbolism, though it has a long Scottish kitchen history too, most obviously in cock-a-leekie. Books of this type, arranged as a dish-a-day calendar, appear to have assigned nationalities generously: the label looks like a device for giving the housekeeper a year of variety, and "Scotch" here may signal little more than that the dish uses a homely northern vegetable rather than the fine herbs of a French omelette. The recipe's terseness is characteristic of the genre. It assumes the reader already knows how to make an omelet and needs only the idea.