Spanish Omelet
6 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 4 ozs. bacon 1 small onion 1 tomato 5 mushrooms chopped fine Cut the bacon in thin slices and then into half inch squares. Fry gently until crisp and add the chopped vegetables. Cook for fifteen minutes. Rub the spoon with a clove of garlic. Break the eggs into a bowl, add seasonings; give them a dozen strong strokes and turn into a frying pan in which a teaspoon of butter has been melted. Bake as usual until nearly set, spread the bacon and vegetables quickly over, fold, set it in the over for one minute, turn it upon a hot platter and serve with Tomato Sauce.
A filled omelet in the old style, where the vegetables are cooked down to a near-jam before they go in. The recipe assumes you know how to handle an omelet pan, so it says almost nothing about heat.
- The fifteen-minute vegetablesThis is the point of the dish, not an error. Onion, tomato and mushroom cooked that long lose their water and concentrate, so the filling does not weep into the eggs. Rushing it gives you a wet omelet.
- "Bake as usual"Since the eggs go into a frying pan, this appears to mean cook in the pan on the stovetop, lifting the setting edges and letting the loose egg run underneath; only the final minute involves the oven.
- Oven for the last minuteThe recipe gives no temperature; the oven is only warming the filling and setting the centre, so a moderate heat suffices. The pan must be ovenproof, which a period iron or steel frying pan generally would be and a modern nonstick pan may not be.
- The garlic spoonA cut clove rubbed on the spoon perfumes the filling without any visible garlic. If you want more presence, mince half a clove into the vegetables in the last two minutes.
- Bacon4 oz of streaky bacon can render a good deal of liquid; pour off the excess before the vegetables go in, leaving a tablespoon or so.
- ButterOne teaspoon in the pan is optimistic for six eggs. Two teaspoons in a well-seasoned or nonstick pan is nearer the mark.
- YieldSix eggs folded in one pan serves two generously, three modestly. For four, work in two pans rather than one large omelet, which is hard to fold cleanly.
- Tomato sauceThe recipe assumes a tomato sauce given elsewhere in the book. A thin, smooth, lightly seasoned tomato sauce rather than a long-simmered Italian-style ragu is the right register here.
American cookbooks of the early twentieth century used "Spanish" loosely, to mean tomato, onion and pepper rather than anything from Spain; the same convention gave us Spanish rice and Spanish sauce, and the actual Spanish tortilla of potato and egg is a different dish entirely. Eggs were a cheap, quick centre of breakfast, supper and the meatless meal, which is why egg chapters in such books tend to be substantial. Rubbing the spoon with a cut clove rather than adding garlic outright is a recognisable period gesture, and may reflect a wariness of garlic in mainstream American kitchens of the time, though that reading is inference rather than documented fact.