Baked Omelet
Beat 6 or 7 eggs very light; it is better to beat the whites separately and add them last. Mix 1 teaspoonful of flour with cold milk until smooth, add a cupful of milk, and bring to a boil. Add pepper and salt, and the beaten yolks of the eggs, then the whites, and turn into a well-buttered earthen baking-dish and bake fifteen or twenty minutes. Serve at once in the same dish.
A souffl\the thin milk-and-flour base that carries the eggs, this is closer to a soufflé than to a folded omelet. The whole point is to get it to the table before it falls.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F; fifteen to twenty minutes suits a dish of this size, and the omelet is done when the centre is just set and no longer wobbles as a liquid.
- The white sauceOne teaspoon of flour slaked in cold milk, then let down with a cup of milk and boiled, gives a very loose sauce. Cool it to warm before adding the yolks or they will scramble in it.
- Folding orderStir the yolk mixture thoroughly, then fold the whites in with a light hand in two or three additions. Overmixing at this stage is what produces a flat, dense omelet.
- Beating the whitesBeat to soft peaks, not stiff and dry. Stiffly beaten whites tear as they are folded and lose the air the dish depends on.
- The baking-dishAn earthen baking-dish means a glazed earthenware or stoneware dish, buttered generously. A 9-inch pie dish or a shallow gratin dish works; allow headroom for the beaten whites, and anything deeper will need longer and may stay wet in the middle.
- ServingIt begins to sink within a minute or two of leaving the oven; the original says to serve at once in the same dish. Six or seven eggs will feed three or four.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks distinguished between the "French" or pan omelet, cooked quickly on the range and folded, and the baked or "puffed" omelet set in the oven with a little thickened milk to hold it.