Fruit Omelets
A good omelet for lunch may be made from fresh or stewed fruits, or with jam, preserves, marmalade, or jelly. A delicious one is made with peaches. Take 5 or 6 ripe freestone peaches; peel, cut in halves, remove the pits, cut them again in quarters; put them in a saucepan with 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar and just sufficient water to keep them from burning. Stew slowly, taking care that they do not break. Make a plain omelet, and when just ready to fold over, lay the pieces of peach across the centre and fold them in. If there should be any syrup in the saucepan, pour it around the omelet after it is dished. Apples may be used in the same way. Pare, core, and cut lengthwise in about eighths, nice tart apples. Put them in a saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, a tablespoonful of sugar to each large apple, and a very little water. Cook slowly without breaking, letting the syrup cook down until the apples are nearly dry.
Grate over them a little nutmeg; lay the apples carefully across the cooked omelet, reserving some whole pieces to arrange around the omelet. Fold the apples in and dust over it a little powdered sugar.
A sweet folded omelet stands or falls on the eggs, not the fruit: the fruit should be cooked, warm and nearly dry before the eggs ever hit the pan.
- Cook the fruit firstBoth fillings must be finished and still warm before you start the eggs. A plain omelet takes two or three minutes and will not wait while peaches stew.
- "A plain omelet"The method is assumed known and is not given here; a typical plain omelet of this kind is a few beaten eggs cooked in butter in a small pan until the surface is just set.
- Freestone peachesFreestone varieties release the pit cleanly; clingstones do not, which is why they are specified. If the skins resist peeling, drop the peaches in boiling water for 30 seconds and slip them off.
- Keeping the fruit wholeStew slowly with barely any water, and move the pieces with a spoon rather than stirring. Overcooked peach quarters collapse into sauce and soak the omelet.
- Apples: reduce the syrupA tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of sugar per large apple gives a lot of liquid. Let it cook down until the pan is nearly dry, or the omelet will weep.
- Choice of apple"Nice tart apples" means a firm cooking variety that holds its shape, such as Granny Smith or Braeburn. Softer dessert apples break down into sauce.
- Powdered sugarPossibly modern confectioners' or icing sugar, though in older usage the term often meant simply finely ground sugar. Here it is dusted over after plating.
- YieldA single fruit omelet of this kind will serve about two as a light lunch or dessert. Making two small omelets is easier than one large one.
Sweet omelets belonged to a period when eggs were a lunch and supper food as much as a breakfast one, and when a cook was expected to improvise from whatever fruit was on hand - hence the opening list of jam, preserves, marmalade and jelly before the writer settles on peaches. The peach version reflects American home preserving habits, in which freestone peaches were a common summer fruit for stewing and canning; the apple version, with its butter, sugar and grated nutmeg, follows an older English-influenced treatment of sweet omelets.