Home › The Principles of Cookery › Bread Omelet
Bread Omelet
Mix equal quantities of bread-crumbs and cream, a tea-spoonful of each, break an ounce of butter into bits, and add with it salt, pepper, and nutmeg. When the cream has been absorbed by the bread, beat it till smooth with a fork, and mix with it three well-beaten eggs. Fry like an ordinary omelet. Time to fry, three to four minutes.
A three-egg omelet enriched with a panade of crumbs and cream — closer to a French omelette with body than to a plain one. The quantities as printed are small, and the method rewards a light hand.
- The quantities are odd as printed"Equal quantities of bread-crumbs and cream, a tea-spoonful of each" gives barely enough panade to register in three eggs. A teaspoon is genuinely what the book says; whether it is a slip or a deliberately faint enrichment cannot be settled from the text.
- Bread-crumbs means fresh crumbsBread-crumbs here means fresh crumbs -- soft crumbs rubbed or torn from the inside of a day-old loaf rather than the dried, toasted sort. Dry crumbs will not swell in the cream and will read as grit.
- An ounce of butterTwenty-eight grams, about two tablespoons — a generous amount for three eggs. It is worked into the panade rather than melted in the pan, so you still need a little extra fat for frying.
- Let the bread soak properlyThe instruction to wait until the cream has been absorbed is the hinge. Beating the panade smooth before it has softened leaves lumps of bread suspended in the egg, and they stay lumps through cooking.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use very little; a couple of scrapes is enough against three eggs. Pre-ground nutmeg in this quantity turns the omelet medicinal.
- Three to four minutesThat is the whole cook, over moderate heat. Judge by the surface rather than the clock; pull it while the top is still glossy.
- YieldOne substantial serving, or two light ones. Scaling up beyond four eggs is better done as two omelets than one large one.
Bread-and-cream panades of this kind run through nineteenth-century English cookery: crumbs soaked in milk or cream were a common way of giving body to forcemeats, puddings and quenelles, and here the same trick is turned on an omelet to make a small number of eggs go further and eat richer. The seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg is a familiar Victorian combination for eggy or milky dishes, nutmeg having long been a standard aromatic for dairy dishes in British kitchens.