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Kidney Omelet
Take the remains of a cold veal kidney, or if this is not at hand, cut a fresh one into slices, and fry it over a clear fire for three or four minutes. Mince it very finely, season with salt and cayenne, and mix two table-spoonfuls of the mince with the well-beaten yolks of six and the whites of three eggs. Add three ounces of fresh butter, broken small. Put two ounces of butter in an omelet-pan, let it remain on a slow fire until it bubbles, then pour in the mixture, and stir briskly for three or four minutes until the eggs are set. Fold the edges of the omelet over neatly, and turn it carefully upon a hot dish. Serve immediately. If too much cooked it will be tough. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A rich French-style omelet stiffened with a little minced kidney, from the era when a cooked kidney left from yesterday's dinner was worth building a dish around. The whole thing lives or dies on the last thirty seconds in the pan.
- The hinge: stop earlyThe book's own warning is the only instruction that matters — "if too much cooked it will be tough." Pull the pan off the heat while the centre still looks wet and glossy; residual heat in the butter and eggs finishes it on the way to the dish. Three or four minutes is an outside figure for a slow fire, not a target.
- Veal kidneyVeal kidney is a multi-lobed organ, milder and more tender than beef or lamb kidney, and now an order-ahead item from a butcher rather than a supermarket buy. Trim out the white core and surrounding fat before slicing; lamb kidneys are the easiest substitute, and one will already give more than the two tablespoons of mince the recipe calls for.
- Only two tablespoons of minceThe recipe uses a very small quantity of kidney against six eggs — this is a seasoning, not a filling. Mince it as finely as the book says, near to a paste, or you get chewy nuggets in a soft omelet.
- The egg ratioSix yolks to three whites gives a custardy, pale-set omelet rather than a fluffy one. It is deliberate; do not even the numbers up. The three spare whites keep for meringues or a glaze.
- Five ounces of butterThree ounces (85 g) broken into the eggs and two ounces (55 g) in the pan is a period level of richness. The butter in the mixture melts as the eggs set and enriches rather than fries; two ounces in the raw mix and one in the pan gives a lighter result many cooks today may prefer, without changing the method.
- Omelet-pan and heatAn 8 to 9 inch pan with sloping sides, nonstick or a well-seasoned steel or iron one. "A slow fire" means gentle heat — the butter should foam steadily and not brown, since browned butter here reads as scorched.
- SeasoningSalt and cayenne only; cayenne was the standard heat in Victorian savoury cookery and a scant pinch is enough against six eggs. Season the mince rather than the raw egg so the salt does not sit on the yolks.
- Yield and costThree or four as a light supper or breakfast dish, as stated, with toast. The "probable cost, 1s" is a shilling in pre-decimal money, a housekeeping figure of its own moment and no guide to price now.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the English breakfast and supper savoury, when offal was cheap, plentiful and unremarkable on a middle-class table, and a cook was expected to have a use for the half kidney left from a grill. The omelet itself is the French one — soft, folded, served the instant it leaves the pan — which English cookery books of the later nineteenth century adopted enthusiastically and then filled with whatever the larder held: kidney, ham, mushrooms, cheese, sweet herbs, jam. The instruction to begin with "the remains of a cold veal kidney" is the real signature of the period: this is a rechauffé, a made-over dish, and books of this kind carried dozens of them because throwing food away was a domestic failing rather than a convenience. Veal kidney was prized above beef for its mildness and fine texture, and it survives in French cookery as rognons de veau; in Britain the taste for it faded through the twentieth century along with organ meats generally.