Plain Omelet
4 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 4 tablespoons milk or water 1 teaspoon butter Break the eggs into a bowl, add seasonings. Give them twelve vigorous beats with the fork and add milk. Melt butter in omelet pan, pour in the egg, shake over a moderate fire until they are set. Roll and turn into a hot dish. To make jelly, parsley, ham, cheese or chicken omelet, spread the seasoning over the egg just before rolling it.
TO FOLD AND TURN OMELET: Hold an omelet pan by the handle in the left hand; with a knife make two inch cuts opposite each other at right angles to the handle; place knife under omelet nearest handle, tip pan slowly over a hot platter, pass knife under omelet slowly when the omelet will fold out.
A French-style rolled omelet in four ingredients. The instructions assume an omelet pan on a coal range and a cook who has done this a hundred times; the details below fill in what the book leaves unsaid.
- The hinge: twelve beats, no moreThe recipe is precise about this for a reason. Beating only until the yolks and whites are streaky-blended keeps the omelet tender; whipping it to a uniform froth gives a spongy, dry result closer to scrambled egg.
- "Moderate fire" means mediumOn a modern burner, medium heat. Too low and the eggs weep liquid; too high and the bottom browns and toughens before the top sets.
- One teaspoon of butter is not enoughThat quantity assumes a well-seasoned black iron or steel omelet pan used for nothing else. In a nonstick or carbon-steel pan of 8 to 9 inches, use a tablespoon so the omelet releases cleanly when you tip it out.
- Shake, don't stirThe shaking keeps the setting curd moving off the pan floor. Modern practice adds a fork or spatula drawn through the eggs for the first 20 seconds, then a rest to let the base firm before rolling.
- TimingTotal cooking is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 minutes. Roll while the surface is still visibly moist; residual heat finishes it on the platter.
- Milk or waterWater gives a lighter, puffier omelet because it steams off; milk gives a softer, slightly richer one that browns faster. Either works at 4 tablespoons for 4 eggs.
- The two-inch cutsThey are scored in the omelet, not the pan: two cuts opposite each other, at right angles to the handle, so the omelet folds out cleanly as the pan tips and the knife is passed under it. A flexible spatula does the same job with less ceremony.
- FillingsKeep them sparing, a few tablespoons at most, spread over the egg just before rolling as the recipe directs. A cold or heavy filling stalls the eggs and can split the roll.
- YieldFour eggs makes one omelet serving two modestly, or one generously. For more people make them one at a time rather than scaling the pan up.
The plain rolled omelet is often said to have served as a test of a competent cook in American cookery instruction. The word omelet comes through French omelette, generally traced to alumelle or alemelle, a variant of lamelle, a thin plate or blade, which describes the shape better than any modern name for it. The dedicated omelet pan the recipe assumes -- shallow, sloping-sided, kept oiled and never washed with soap -- was ordinary equipment in a period kitchen, and the fussy folding instructions exist because turning an omelet out of iron onto a platter in one piece was genuinely a learned skill.