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German Omelette
Fry a quarter of a pound of bacon cut into dice. When done, beat up eight eggs with pepper and salt to taste, add them to the bacon, and fry all together. Stir until it gets thick, and then turn it out into a very hot dish, and serve. Probable cost, 1s.
A flat bacon omelette closer to a loose scramble than a folded French omelette. Almost everything depends on keeping the heat low once the eggs go in.
- The hinge: stop while it still looks underdone"Stir until it gets thick" over too high a flame gives curds in a puddle of weeping liquid. Cook over medium-low, stirring, and turn it out when the eggs are glossy and just short of set; carryover heat on the hot dish finishes them.
- Quantities and yieldEight eggs and 4 oz (115 g) bacon serves three to four generously. Halve it for two, in which case use a 20-24 cm pan so the eggs are not spread too thin.
- The baconVictorian bacon was often dry-salted and fattier than modern cuts, so dicing and frying it usually rendered plenty of fat to cook the eggs in. Modern wet-cured streaky bacon or pancetta works; if the pan looks dry after frying, add a knob of butter rather than trying to cook eggs in a bare pan.
- SaltSeason the eggs lightly until you have tasted the bacon, which may already carry plenty of salt.
- Drain off surplus fatCut bacon can release several tablespoons of fat. Pour most of it off before adding the eggs, or the omelette turns greasy.
- "A very hot dish"Not a flourish. A cold serving plate chills a soft egg mixture instantly; warm the dish in a 100C/200F oven while you cook.
- Probable costOne shilling, which at four servings works out at about threepence a head.
Cassell's belongs to the late-Victorian tradition of drawing national labels rather loosely: what appears to make this omelette "German" is the diced bacon (Speck) stirred through the eggs, a treatment often said to be familiar across German-speaking kitchens, as against the plain or herbed French omelette that the same dictionaries treat as the standard. The distinction may well be as much technical as geographic, though the book does not say so. A French omelette is rolled and served pale; this one is stirred until thick and turned out flat, closer to a Bauernomelett or a Spanish tortilla in shape. Egg dishes of this kind earned their place in a household dictionary because they were fast, cheap and made from things a cook already had: a piece of bacon from the larder and a few eggs.