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Mignonette Pepper
Salt. One ounce of Butter.
Break the eggs into a basin and whip them till well mixed; then add pepper, salt, and the cheese.
Melt one ounce of butter in the omelet pan, and turn in the eggs; stir quickly to prevent the omelet from sticking. When just set, turn it quickly over towards the handle of the pan for a second, and then on to a hot dish.
The page has come down to us cut off at the top: the ingredient list begins mid-sentence with "Salt" and the eggs and cheese arrive without quantities. The method is complete, and it is a plain cheese omelet of the sort every Victorian cookery course taught first.
- What mignonette pepper isThe title is most likely the tail of the truncated ingredient list, corresponding to the "pepper" called for in the body. Mignonette pepper is coarsely cracked peppercorns left in flecks rather than ground to dust — usually described as white, though some period sources describe a mixture — and the name is traditionally explained by a resemblance to mignonette seed. Crush the peppercorns under a pan base or use the coarsest setting on a mill; pre-ground white pepper is a poor substitute in an omelet, where the point is the scattered bite.
- Missing quantitiesThe surviving list gives only salt and "one ounce of butter" (2 tablespoons); the eggs and cheese are lost with the truncation. Nothing in the surviving text confirms the quantities intended, or how many the omelet was meant to serve.
- The cheeseCheese omelets in books of this period often used dry grated Parmesan, sometimes with Gruyère, but this page does not say. Cheddar behaves differently, releasing more fat and water, and will make a looser omelet.
- The hinge: whip, do not beat to froth"Whip them till well mixed" is precise. The whites and yolks should be homogeneous and slightly loosened, no more. Aerating the eggs gives a soufflé texture that will collapse and weep once folded.
- Pan and heatAn "omelet pan" of this period was typically a shallow iron or heavy tinned pan with sloping sides, kept seasoned. A well-seasoned carbon steel or nonstick pan is the modern equivalent; the size depends on the number of eggs, which the fragment does not give. Work over fairly brisk heat — an omelet of this kind cooks very quickly.
- "When just set"Stop while the surface is still visibly moist and the centre soft. Residual heat finishes it on the hot dish, and cheese omelets in particular turn squeaky and rubbery if held in the pan until dry.
- The turnTipping the pan towards the handle rolls the far edge over on itself; a moment against the hot metal sets the seam, then it is slid seam-side down onto the plate. A palette knife helps start the fold, but the wrist does most of it.
- ServingWith the quantities missing the yield cannot be established; whatever the size, it will not wait. Warm the dish thoroughly before you begin.
Omelet-making was a common test piece in late nineteenth-century cookery instruction, and the terse phrasing here — the pupil assumed to know the pan, the heat and the wrist movement, and needing only the sequence — is consistent with that world, though the source of this page is not identified. Mignonette pepper is traditionally said to take its name from the garden mignonette, whose small seeds the coarse-cracked peppercorns were thought to resemble; the term is common in Anglo-French kitchen writing of the period and survives today mainly in the shallot-and-cracked-pepper sauce mignonette served with oysters.