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HERB OMELET (omelette aux Fines Herbes)
Break six eggs into a basin, add a table-spoonful of cream, and beat up well; then add two dessert-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, including a small chopped shallot, a pinch of sweet herbs, and pepper and salt to taste. Cut a clove of garlic, and rub the inside of the omelet-pan with the cut side. Melt one ounce of butter in the pan, and when hot pour in the egg mixture. Stir over a brisk fire with a fork until the eggs begin to set, then roll towards the side of the pan opposite the handle, and give it the shape of an oval cushion. Let it become a golden brown. Turn out on to a hot oval dish, and serve.
A classic rolled French omelette, written for a coal range and an iron pan kept solely for eggs. The technique survives unchanged; only the vocabulary needs translating.
- The hinge: keep it moving, then stopThe eggs are stirred constantly with a fork only until they begin to set, then left alone to form a skin on the base. Stirring past that point scrambles them; stopping too early gives a raw centre that will not roll.
- Dessert-spoonfulRoughly two teaspoons, about half a tablespoon in Victorian reckoning. Two of them is about a tablespoon of chopped parsley in total, shallot included.
- "Sweet herbs"Victorian shorthand for the mild culinary herbs — thyme, marjoram, savory, sometimes basil — usually dried and mixed. For a fines herbes omelette, fresh chervil, tarragon and chives are closer to the French intention than a dried mixture.
- A brisk fireMedium-high heat. The pan should be hot enough that the butter foams and just begins to colour before the eggs go in, but not smoking; browned butter turns the omelette speckled and bitter.
- The garlicRubbing the cut clove around the pan is all the garlic this dish gets, and it is meant to be barely detectable. Chopped garlic in the egg is a different and much louder dish.
- Pan and quantitySix eggs want a large pan, something in the region of 10 inches; in anything much smaller the omelette sets too thick to roll cleanly. With an 8-inch pan, consider two three-egg omelettes in succession rather than one large one.
- Colour"Golden brown" here means the outside surface only, taken at the very end of cooking. The interior of a properly made rolled omelette stays soft and slightly loose — the French baveuse.
- YieldServes two generously, three at a light supper. It will not hold: turn it out and take it to the table at once.
The phrase fines herbes in French practice generally means the quartet of parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, chopped fine and added raw; the version here uses parsley with shallot and a pinch of dried "sweet herbs" instead. Iron omelet-pans held their seasoning best if kept for one job and not scoured, and the same reasoning survives in the modern habit of a pan reserved for eggs.