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North American Watermelons
still quite moist sprinkle on top of one-half the omelet a cupful of grated or chopped pineapple (fresh or canned), fold over and serve at once, sprinkling sugar on top.
What survives here is the finishing of a sweet omelet: the filling, the fold and the sugar. The technique is straightforward, but a dessert omelet behaves differently from a savoury one and a few details decide whether it succeeds.
- The hinge: leave it underdone"Still quite moist" is the whole instruction. A sweet omelet is pulled while the surface is glossy and barely set, because residual heat and the warm fruit finish it on the plate. Cooked to dryness it turns to sweetened scrambled egg.
- Scale and yieldThe recipe gives no egg count; a cupful of fruit would be generous filling for an omelet of about three eggs, enough for one as a dessert. For more people, make successive small omelets rather than one large one.
- Drain the fruitBoth fresh and canned pineapple carry a lot of juice, and canned is packed in syrup. Drain it well and pat it dry, or the liquid will run out at the fold and steam the eggs from within.
- Fresh versus cannedCanned pineapple is heat-processed, so its bromelain is inactive. Fresh pineapple's enzyme digests protein and can soften a raw or barely set egg if the two are left standing together; add fresh fruit at the last moment and serve immediately, as the recipe directs.
- Warm the fruitCold fruit from the tin drops the temperature of the omelet at exactly the wrong moment. A brief warming in a small pan, with the juice cooked off, gives a better result.
- Pan and heatAn eight- to nine-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan over medium heat is right. Any syrup clinging to the fruit will catch, so keep the heat moderate; the sugar in this recipe goes on after the omelet leaves the pan.
- The sugar on topSuperfine sugar dissolves into the surface; granulated stays gritty. If the sugar is to be browned under a broiler, do it in seconds and watch it, as the egg beneath is deliberately soft.
Sweet omelets filled with jam, preserved fruit or liqueur were a standard light dessert in nineteenth-century English and American cookery, sitting alongside pancakes and fritters as a dish that could be made quickly from the store cupboard. Pineapple entered that repertoire late: fresh fruit reached most inland tables only after refrigerated rail and steamship shipping, and the canned form became reliably cheap as Hawaiian and Caribbean canneries expanded around the turn of the twentieth century.