Home › Village Receipts › Puff Omelet
Puff Omelet
Six eggs, one cup of milk, little salt, and butter. Heat the milk, add the salt and butter; beat together the yolks of the eggs and the whites of three, stir them into the hot milk, pour into a hot buttered dish and add the other three whites (well beaten). Bake ten or fifteen minutes. If the top browns before the rest is done finish cooking it upon the top of the stove.
— Mrs. Fannie Smith
A baked omelet in the old sense: a custard-light base with beaten whites folded on last, which is what gives it the puff. Two things in the original need translating, the oven temperature and the vague butter.
- The hinge: temper, don't scrambleThe milk is hot and the yolks go straight in, so pour it into the eggs in a thin stream while whisking rather than dumping the eggs into the pan. Curdled yolk will not rise, and no amount of beaten white will rescue it.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; a wood or coal range offered no dial. For a ten to fifteen minute bake in a shallow dish a moderate oven, around 350F, is a sensible modern reading; hotter and the top sets and browns before the centre.
- "Butter" with no quantityRead it as about a tablespoon melted into the milk, plus more for the dish. It is there for richness and to keep the eggs from gripping, not as a structural ingredient, so the amount is forgiving.
- A hot buttered dishButter the dish and put it in the oven while you beat the eggs. Pouring onto hot butter sets the bottom immediately, which is the same reasoning behind a preheated pan for Yorkshire pudding. A 9-inch pie plate or a shallow gratin dish works; a deep casserole will not cook through in fifteen minutes.
- The last three whitesThe original only says to 'add' them once the batter is in the dish, which most naturally reads as spooning them over the surface rather than folding them through, though it could be read either way. Beat them to soft peaks and bake at once they a meringue cap and lose their lift if they stand.
- Finishing on the stovetopThis is sound advice, not a quirk. If the top colours too fast, move the dish to a low burner and cover it; the residual steam finishes the centre. A modern equivalent is to tent it loosely with foil and leave it in the oven a few minutes longer.
- Doneness and timingTen to fifteen minutes is the bake, but the recipe itself allows extra time on the stovetop if the centre is not set. The centre should be just set with only a slight wobble; cooked until quite firm it will be dry and will sink.
- YieldSix eggs gives three generous or four modest servings. Serve it straight from the dish, at once — the puff lasts a couple of minutes.
Baked or "puff" omelets belong to a family of nineteenth-century American egg dishes that sit between a French omelet and a souffleaten into the base, three saved for the top there is no way to tell from the page why. The instruction to finish the cooking on top of the stove points to a kitchen with an uneven wood or coal range, where the cook moved food toward or away from the fire rather than turning a dial. The credit to a named contributor is typical of community cookbooks of the period, which were assembled from neighbours' handwritten receipts and often sold to raise funds.