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Corn-Flour Omelet
Beat up two eggs, and mix them with one table-spoonful of corn-flour, and a tea-cupful of milk. Add a little sugar, and salt and pepper, if desired. Put the whole into an omelet-pan, previously well heated and covered with melted butter, and move the pan constantly over the fire. Turn the omelet several times, and double it over. Cook it until it is lightly browned.
A thin, batter-like omelet closer to a sweetened pancake than a French omelette. The corn-flour is doing the work of a third egg, so the mixture must be treated as a batter, not as eggs.
- Corn-flour is cornstarchIn British usage corn-flour means the fine white starch sold in the United States as cornstarch. It is not cornmeal, and not maize flour; either of those will give a gritty, heavy result.
- Slake the starch firstWhisk the cornstarch into a little of the cold milk to a smooth cream before adding the eggs and the rest of the milk. Tipping dry starch into beaten egg leaves lumps that will not disperse in the pan.
- A tea-cupfulConventionally reckoned at about a quarter of a pint in the period's usage, so roughly 4 to 5 fl oz — teacups were smaller than breakfast cups. With two eggs this gives a very loose batter, which is the point: it sets in thin sheets rather than curds.
- Sweet or savoury, not bothThe recipe hedges with "a little sugar, and salt and pepper, if desired." Choose one direction. A teaspoon of sugar for a sweet omelet to eat with jam or lemon, or a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper for a savoury one — a pinch of salt belongs in either.
- Heat and fatMedium heat in an 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan, with enough butter to coat. Corn-flour batter catches and colours faster than plain egg, so a screaming-hot pan will brown the outside before the centre sets.
- "Move the pan constantly"This is the hinge. The starch settles and the batter sets unevenly if left alone; keep it sliding and tilt so uncooked batter runs to the edges, as you would for a crêpe.
- Turning"Turn the omelet several times" reads oddly to a modern cook — treat it as one flip once the underside is set and lightly coloured, then a further minute before folding. The whole thing takes three or four minutes.
- YieldOne generous portion, or two small ones as part of a breakfast. It does not hold; serve it straight from the pan.
Corn-flour omelets belong to the Victorian vogue for refined starches, which spread through British kitchens in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and were promoted as cheap, digestible thickeners for invalid and nursery cookery. Its purpose here appears largely economic: a spoonful of starch and a cup of milk stretch two eggs further than they would otherwise go. The same logic produced the era's corn-flour blancmanges, moulds and custards, all trading a little richness for a great deal of bulk. The hedged seasoning — sugar, or salt and pepper, as you please — suggests a period in which the omelet had not yet settled firmly on either side of the sweet-savoury line in English households.