Home › The Principles of Cookery › Bacon or Ham Omelet
Bacon or Ham Omelet
Beat six eggs, and add a small tea-spoonful of flour mixed with a table-spoonful of milk or water, and pepper and salt to taste. Mince half a pound of cold boiled bacon or ham, and stir it in with the eggs. Dissolve a good piece of butter or fat in the omelet-pan and pour in the omelet. Shake the pan while dressing. In three or four minutes the sides may be folded over, and the omelet turned out on a hot dish, or taken up with a flat spoon. Some cooks prefer to put the bacon or ham in the middle and fold the sides over it. This kind of omelet may be made with a variety of ingredients; cold meat, kidney, green-peas, asparagus tops, small mushrooms, oysters, and lobster. Time, from three to four minutes. Probable cost, about 1s. with bacon. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A large filled omelet of the Victorian type, cooked flat in a heavy pan rather than rolled French-style. The only real adjustments are pan size, salt, and knowing when to stop cooking.
- Pan size and batchSix eggs plus half a pound of meat is a great deal for one pan; use a 10-11 inch skillet, or split it into two three-egg omelets in an 8-inch pan. Crowded eggs steam rather than set.
- Salt with a light handModern supermarket bacon and ham are brined far more aggressively than the home-boiled joint assumed here. Taste the minced meat first and season the eggs with pepper only if it is salty.
- "Cold boiled bacon"In British usage bacon covered cured pork generally, including joints boiled whole and eaten cold, which is what is meant here: closer to today's gammon or ham than to rashers. A thick slice of cooked ham or gammon, diced small, is the right substitute; if using streaky rashers, fry and drain them first.
- The flourA teaspoon of flour slaked in a tablespoon of milk is a stabiliser, keeping the eggs from weeping. It is optional by modern practice and can simply be left out for a softer set.
- Three to four minutes is the outside limitThat timing assumes a hot pan and constant shaking. Pull the omelet when the top is still visibly moist; residual heat finishes it on the plate, and an extra minute gives a rubbery, weeping result.
- "A good piece of butter"Roughly 1 to 1.5 oz, about 2-3 tablespoons, enough to coat the pan generously. Clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix tolerates the heat better and will not brown while the eggs set.
- The suggested variationsPeas, asparagus tips and mushrooms should be cooked and well drained before they go in, or the omelet will be watery. Oysters and lobster should be cooked through beforehand rather than left to warm in the residual heat of the folded omelet.
- YieldAs written it serves three or four as a supper dish with bread; two if it is the whole meal.
This belongs among the substantial omelets Victorian households ate at breakfast, luncheon or high tea rather than as a delicate French entree, and its logic is thrift: the half-pound of cold boiled bacon or ham is the tail end of a joint, given a second life. Costings such as "about 1s." are a standard feature of these entries. The recipe itself offers an alternative method, filling the centre and folding the sides over. The list of substitutions at the end, running from kidney to lobster, shows the omelet doing what it has always done in a working kitchen, which is to absorb whatever the larder holds.