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Pineapple Omelet
Beat three eggs thoroughly with a tablespoon of sugar, adding just at the last a teaspoonful each of pineapple and lemon juice and a pinch of salt. The omelet pan should be ready (heated) containing a teaspoonful of melted butter or oil. Place the eggs therein and as they cook break the omelet once in a while with the tines of a silver fork. When
A sweet omelet, closer to a French omelette sucrée than to a savoury breakfast dish. The text breaks off mid-sentence in the original, so the finish has to be reconstructed from standard practice.
- The missing endingThe recipe stops at "When" — probably something to the effect of "when set, fold and serve at once," though the wording is lost. Sweet omelets are generally turned out folded in half, often with a little more sugar dusted over, and are eaten immediately; they collapse and weep within a few minutes.
- Heat is the hingeSugar in the egg means the surface browns and then scorches much faster than in a plain omelet. Medium-low heat and constant movement for the first thirty seconds, then a short rest to set the base — total cooking time is under two minutes.
- "Break the omelet with the tines"This is the older method of dragging the setting curd around the pan rather than stirring, so the omelet builds in soft ribbons. A fork does it better than a spatula, but a nonstick pan wants a heatproof silicone tool instead.
- Why a silver forkThe recipe gives no reason; the usual explanation is that the iron and carbon steel of the period could discolour egg and leave a metallic taste. Modern stainless steel is inert and does no harm; sterling, for its part, will tarnish from the sulfur in eggs.
- Pineapple juiceA teaspoon is a flavour accent, not a filling, and the recipe adds it at the very end. Fresh juice contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme, though at this quantity and over the few seconds before the eggs reach the pan any effect would be slight; canned juice is heat-treated and contains no active enzyme.
- Pan and fatA teaspoon of butter is enough only in a well-seasoned or nonstick 8-inch pan. In anything else, use a tablespoon — sweetened egg sticks readily.
- YieldThree eggs makes one generous serving or two small ones. Doubling in a single pan does not work well; cook two omelets in succession.
Sweet omelets were a standard dessert course in nineteenth-century American and English cookery, usually flavoured with jam, liqueur or citrus, and they appear in fruit-focused collections like this one as a way of showing off a single ingredient in a small quantity. Pineapple was a natural candidate, though how far it had ceased to be a luxury by the time of this recipe is hard to say from the page alone — it had once been a centerpiece, a fruit reportedly rented out by the day as a table ornament, as is often said of the Georgian era. What is clear is that the recipe uses a mere teaspoonful: the flavour was treated as a perfume rather than a bulk fruit.