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Omelet, Savoury
Beat and strain four eggs; add to them a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a tea-spoonful of chopped onion, and a sprinkling of pepper and salt, and beat up again. Put two ounces of butter in a small round frying-pan, and let it melt, then pour in the eggs and seasoning, and stir the mixture over a moderate fire till the omelet is set. Turn it on to a hot dish, fold it in two, and serve immediately.
A plain French-style omelet of the kind Cassell's treats as a foundation exercise. The proportions are sound; only the pan and the heat need translating.
- Straining the eggsBeating and then straining removes the chalazae and any unbroken white, giving a uniform set. Push the beaten eggs through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon; it takes under a minute and is the difference between a smooth omelet and a streaky one.
- The panA "small round frying-pan" probably means something in the region of 7-8 inches; well-seasoned carbon steel or non-stick will do. Anything larger with four eggs gives you a thin sheet that overcooks before it can be folded.
- Moderate fireMedium heat, not low. The butter should foam and just stop hissing before the eggs go in; if it browns, wipe out and start again.
- Two ounces of butterThat is 4 tablespoons, generous by modern habit but it is what keeps the omelet from sticking in a period iron pan. In a non-stick pan 1 tablespoon is enough.
- Stir till setStir with the flat of a fork for the first 20-30 seconds to build small curds, then stop and let the base set. Pull it off the heat while the surface is still visibly moist; residual heat finishes it on the plate.
- TimingThe cooking is quick, a couple of minutes at most. Prolonged cooking gives the rubbery, weeping omelet the recipe is trying to avoid.
- OnionHalf a teaspoon of raw chopped onion will stay sharp and crunchy in so short a cooking. Soften it in a little of the butter first, then let it cool before adding to the eggs.
- YieldFour eggs make one omelet serving two modestly, or one generously. It does not scale in the pan; cook two separate omelets rather than eight eggs at once.
The fines herbes pattern here, parsley and a little onion beaten into the egg, is the English domestic reduction of a French model; French practice generally used chervil, chives and tarragon alongside parsley. The instruction to fold the omelet on the dish rather than in the pan is characteristic of the period, and nineteenth-century English omelets are often described as folded in two rather than rolled into the cigar shape a modern restaurant cook aims for.