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Salmon Omelet
For an omelet made with six eggs, take as much cold cooked salmon, freed from skin and bone, as would equal in bulk three hen's eggs. Tear this into flakes, and heat them gently in a saucepan with any remains there may be of lobster, shrimp, oyster, or anchovy sauce. If no such remains are at hand, a little melted butter must be made for the purpose. Season the ragout delicately with pepper, nutmeg, and lemon-juice, and be careful to let it be very thick. Prepare and fry the omelet in the usual way (see OMELET). Place the hot ragout in the centre, and finish it as in other cases. Work a spoonful of blanched and chopped parsley into a lump of butter. Place this in the centre of a hot dish, put the omelet upon it, and serve immediately. The butter melting beneath the omelet will make the only sauce required. When kippered salmon is used, the flakes of fish may be beaten up with the eggs and fried with the omelet. Time, a few minutes to heat the fish in the sauce. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A late-Victorian way of using up cold poached salmon and the dregs of a fish sauce. The hinge is the filling: it must be thick enough to sit in a mound, or it will burst the omelet and flood the plate.
- How much salmon"Equal in bulk to three hen's eggs" works out to roughly 5-6 oz of flaked cooked fish, about 150 g. That is a generous but not overwhelming filling for a six-egg omelet.
- "A little melted butter"In this period melted butter means the standard English butter sauce -- butter, flour and a little liquid cooked to a thick coating consistency -- not simply butter liquefied in a pan. Plain molten butter will not bind the flakes.
- The leftover saucesLobster, shrimp, oyster and anchovy sauces were common accompaniments at a Victorian fish dinner, though the recipe plainly allows that none may be to hand. A modern substitute is a small quantity of thick bechamel sharpened with anchovy paste, or a spoonful of shellfish bisque reduced until it barely pours.
- Keep it very thickThe instruction is repeated for good reason. Reduce the ragout until a spoon drawn through it leaves a clear track; a loose filling turns the omelet into scrambled fish.
- Heat the fish gentlyCooked salmon only needs warming through, two or three minutes over low heat. Boiled hard it goes dry and grainy and the flakes break down into paste.
- Nutmeg and lemonA scrape of nutmeg on fish reads oddly now but was routine in English cookery of the time. Use it sparingly, and add the lemon juice off the heat so it stays bright.
- Kippered salmonThis means cold-smoked salmon of the harder, saltier old style rather than modern silky sliced lox. If you use smoked salmon in the egg mixture as suggested, cut back or omit added salt and skip the anchovy element entirely.
- The parsley butterBlanching the parsley first keeps the colour and softens the raw edge. Two or three tablespoons of soft butter worked with a spoonful of chopped parsley is enough; it melts into the only sauce the dish gets, so the serving dish must be genuinely hot.
- Pan and yieldSix eggs need a 10-inch pan to cook fast and fold cleanly. As the original says, it serves three or four, which suits it better to lunch or supper than to a main course.
Cassell's belongs to a generation of British household dictionaries built around the assumption that nothing leaves the kitchen unused: the recipe opens with cold cooked salmon and makes use of leftover lobster or oyster sauce where the larder can supply it, while providing for its absence. Salmon was still a seasonal and, in much of the country, comparatively costly fish in the late nineteenth century, and the dish is given a stated cost of 1s. 6d. The omelet itself is treated as a vehicle -- the book's cross-reference to the general OMELET entry shows that the folding and frying were considered settled technique, with the interest lying in the filling. The finishing touch of parsley butter under the omelet, left to melt into a sauce, is a domestic cousin of the restaurant maitre d'hotel butter that French cooking had made familiar to English kitchens by this date.