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Sweet Herbs, Omelet Of
Prepare the omelet in the usual way. (See OMELET, and PRINCIPLES OF COOKERY, page vii.) Before frying it, stir into it a very small quantity of chopped sweet herbs. Parsley, chervil, and chives are the herbs most frequently chosen. Onions or shallots, thyme, and sage, may be introduced if liked.
A cross-referenced variation rather than a standalone recipe: Cassell's assumes you already know the plain omelet and is only telling you what to put in it. The whole thing hinges on the herbs being finely chopped and used sparingly, so they cook through in the minute the eggs are in the pan.
- "Sweet herbs"In Victorian usage this means the mild culinary herbs as opposed to the bitter or medicinal ones, not anything sugared. The named trio - parsley, chervil, chives - overlaps closely with the French fines herbes, which conventionally adds tarragon to those three.
- How much is "a very small quantity"Cassell's gives no measure. As a modern working guide, roughly a tablespoon of chopped soft herbs to a three-egg omelet; much more than that adds moisture and makes the omelet harder to set cleanly.
- The base omeletCassell's directs you to its own general OMELET entry and to PRINCIPLES OF COOKERY, page vii, and gives no quantities here. Any standard rolled or folded omelet method applies: eggs beaten just until yolks and whites are combined rather than frothy, a pinch of salt, butter in the pan.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh and it loses everything when dried. If you cannot find it, use a little more parsley plus a few tarragon leaves for the faint anise note chervil supplies.
- Onion, shallot, thyme and sageCassell's offers these as optional additions. They are woodier or more pungent than the first three and can taste raw in the short time an omelet is in the pan: sweat minced shallot in butter first and let it cool before it meets the eggs, and use thyme and sage in leaf quantities rather than spoonfuls.
- Stirring in before fryingFold the herbs through the beaten eggs rather than scattering them into the pan, so they are suspended in the curd. Herbs dropped onto hot butter scorch and turn bitter.
- YieldCassell's gives no yield. A single omelet of about three eggs serves one generously or two as a light course; make omelets one at a time rather than scaling the mixture up in a large pan.
The combination of parsley, chervil and chives is close to the classic French fines herbes, which is usually given with tarragon as well, and its appearance here in a nineteenth-century English dictionary of cookery shows how thoroughly middle-class English home cookery had absorbed French practice. "Sweet herbs" is the older English term, found in cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, distinguishing the pot herbs used for flavour from bitter herbs and from those grown for physic; a bunch of sweet herbs tied with string was a standard direction long before the phrase bouquet garni entered English. Cassell's structure - a short entry that sends you back to a master recipe and changes one variable - is characteristic of the big Victorian household dictionaries, which were built to be consulted rather than read, and which assumed a cook who already knew how to turn an omelet and needed only to be told what to put in it.