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Omelet
Beat one egg separately, the white till stiff, but not dry. Add one tablespoon of milk to the yolk, mix well, stir in the white and pour at once into a hot buttered pan. Set in a quick oven till a delicate brown. Loosen the edges, lift up one end with a cake turner, fold over and serve at once. This omelet does not toughen or get heavy.
A single-egg soufflé omelet, scaled for one person who is not feeling well. The whole point is the beaten white, so treat it gently.
- "A quick oven"Period usage puts that somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat a one-egg omelet in a small pan should color in a few minutes; check at three.
- Use an ovenproof panThe batter goes into a hot buttered pan on the stove and then straight into the oven, so it needs a metal or cast-iron skillet with no plastic handle. A 6-inch pan gives the right depth for one egg.
- "Stiff but not dry"Stop when the white holds a peak that just bends at the tip. Beaten past that it turns grainy, will not fold into the yolk, and weeps in the oven, which is exactly the heaviness the recipe promises to avoid.
- Fold, do not stirDespite the instruction to "stir in the white", work gently: cut the two together with a spatula in a few strokes and accept some streaking. Overmixing is the easiest way to lose the lift.
- Pour at onceThe foam begins to collapse the moment it is mixed, so have the pan hot and buttered before you beat the egg at all.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. A pinch of salt in the yolk is normal practice now and will not affect the texture.
- YieldOne egg, one small omelet, one person. It does not scale well past three eggs in a single pan; make them in succession instead.
- DonenessServe it just set and still slightly moist in the center. Held in the oven for the sake of more color it goes dry and flat, and a souffle omelet does not reheat well.
The technique itself is the souffl he the the white is whipped separately; here the omelet is set in an oven and then folded over. Nearly every American household manual of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried a chapter of cookery for the sick, and such chapters rested on the period belief that lightness meant digestibility, of which eggs and milk were the standbys — though this recipe as given carries only the title "Omelet," with no indication of where it sits. The closing promise that it "does not toughen or get heavy" speaks to the same preoccupation with a dish that stays light on the plate.