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Omelet with Peas
Make a plain omelet with 6 eggs. Have ready a pint of freshly cooked green peas--or a can of peas from which the water has been drained--heated and seasoned with salt and pepper. When the omelet has set and is ready to fold over, put 2 or 3 spoonfuls of the peas in the centre; fold over as usual and turn on to a hot platter. Add to the remaining peas 2 spoonfuls of rich cream; let it heat quickly and pour it around the omelet. Serve at once. The cream may be omitted and the peas served dry, with plenty of butter over.
A plain folded omelet used as a vehicle for buttered peas, with the surplus peas thinned into a cream sauce for the platter. The whole thing takes about ten minutes once the peas are hot.
- Have the peas hot firstThe omelet cooks in two or three minutes and cannot wait. Peas, butter, cream and the warmed platter should all be standing by before the eggs meet the pan.
- Six eggs is a large omeletSix eggs need a 10- to 12-inch pan to set in a thin enough sheet to fold. In a smaller pan, split the mixture and make two omelets of three eggs each, serving two people apiece.
- A pint of peas"A pint of peas" -- A US pint of shelled peas is about 2 cups, roughly 10 oz. A modern 15 oz can drains down to rather less than that, around 8 to 9 oz, but close enough for the purpose. Frozen peas work here and need only a minute in butter.
- "2 or 3 spoonfuls"Most likely tablespoons, the usual sense of an unqualified "spoonful" in cookbooks of this period, though the recipe does not say. That is enough to fill the fold without splitting the omelet; the balance goes into the sauce.
- The cream"Rich cream" here means the heaviest cream available, what would now be sold as heavy cream. Two spoonfuls over the remaining peas is a gloss, not a sauce that needs reducing -- warm it through and pour rather than letting it boil down.
- Heat, not colourMedium heat, and pull the set edges toward the centre so the raw egg runs underneath. The omelet should be pale gold at most and still slightly moist inside when folded, since it carries on cooking on the hot platter.
- YieldServes three or four as a light main course, two if it is the whole of a supper.
History: Omelets stuffed with a single cooked vegetable are common in American cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, usually grouped under "Eggs" as a way to turn a small quantity of something into a course. Peas were among the vegetables canned commercially in the United States from an early date, alongside corn and tomatoes, and the offer of "a can of peas from which the water has been drained" suggests a period in which canned peas were cheap and easily had -- though canned peas were available over too long a span to date the entry closely, and the substitution is presented here without apology. The alternative ending -- cream, or simply "plenty of butter" -- gives a plainer version beside the richer one.