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Raspberry Omelet
Mash and press through a sieve a half pint of large red raspberries and finish precisely the same as Peach Omelet.
A one-line variation that leans entirely on its neighbour in the book, so the first job is to find the Peach Omelet and read it before starting. What follows covers the measurements and the handling of the fruit.
- Half a pint of berriesA half pint here is a liquid half-pint measure filled with whole berries, about one cup, or roughly 4 oz. Sieved, that will yield well under a cup of seedless purée; check it against the quantity the Peach Omelet calls for.
- Pressing through a sieveRaspberry seeds are hard and numerous, and a coarse colander will not hold them back. Use a fine mesh strainer and work the pulp with the back of a ladle, then scrape the underside of the sieve to recover the thick purée clinging there.
- SweeteningRipe peaches are generally sweeter and less sharp than raspberries, so a purée substituted one for one will taste more acid. Taste the sieved fruit and adjust the sugar called for in the companion recipe rather than following it blindly.
- Keep the purée thickDo not thin it with water or juice. A loose purée weeps into beaten egg and the omelet will not hold its shape when folded or turned out.
- Pan and heatUse a small heavy pan and finish quickly over a lively heat. This one-line recipe gives no oven direction; follow whatever the Peach Omelet specifies.
- GlazingPeriod sweet omelets were often dusted with powdered sugar and glazed with a hot iron or salamander. A broiler element for under a minute does the same work; sugar over fruit purée scorches fast, so watch it rather than time it.
- Serve at onceA fruit omelet collapses within a few minutes of leaving the heat. Have the plates and the sugar ready before the eggs go into the pan.
- YieldThe egg count comes from the companion recipe, not this one. If you scale up, cook two omelets rather than doubling the eggs in one pan, which gives a heavy, damp result.
Titles like this belong to the late nineteenth-century American vogue for light, quickly cooked summer cookery, of which Sarah Tyson Rorer's Hot Weather Dishes (1888) is one example: the premise was that a household with no ice and a coal range needed dishes that came off the stove in minutes. Sweet omelets, filled with jam, preserved fruit, or fresh fruit purée, sat comfortably in that scheme, since they used no oven time to speak of and turned a bowl of soft summer fruit into a supper dish or a dessert without preserving it. The terse cross-reference is characteristic of the genre as well: a variation that changed only the fruit was given a single line, and the method appears under the peach version, peaches being the archetypal American summer fruit.