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Strawberry Omelet
Strawberry omelet is made precisely the same as Raspberry Omelet.
EGGS a la TRIPE Boil eight fresh eggs for twenty minutes, then throw them in cold water for five minutes, take off the shells and cut into rather thick slices. Cut three small onions into slices, and then separate the slices into rings, cover with water and boil ten minutes, then drain in a colander. Make a half pint of Béchamel sauce, add to it an eighth of a teaspoonful of nutmeg, the juice of half a lemon, salt and pepper to taste, add the eggs and onions, stir gently until the eggs are thoroughly heated. Serve very hot, garnished with diamonds of toasted bread.
Two things share this page: a one-line cross-reference for the strawberry omelet, and a complete recipe for eggs à la tripe. Neither needs much translating, but the egg timing does.
- The omelet lineStrawberry omelet is only a pointer to the raspberry version, presumably a sweet omelet filled with sweetened fruit. On its own this line gives no method, so you need the raspberry entry to cook from it.
- Twenty minutes is too longEggs boiled twenty minutes develop a green-grey ring at the yolk and a sulfurous edge. Ten to twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then straight into cold water, gives firm yolks that slice cleanly — which is all this dish asks of them.
- Half a pint of BéchamelOne cup. Roughly 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour and 1 cup of milk, cooked until it coats a spoon. Nineteenth-century Béchamel was often built on veal or chicken stock with cream rather than milk alone; plain milk is fine here.
- Parboiling the onionsThe ten-minute boil and drain is not a shortcut for sautéing. It strips the raw sharpness without adding colour or fat, keeping the sauce pale, which is the point of the dish.
- Add the lemon last, off the heatAcid in a hot flour-thickened milk sauce can turn it grainy. Stir the juice in after the sauce is made and the pan is off the burner, then fold in the eggs and onions.
- "Stir gently until thoroughly heated"This is the hinge. The eggs are already cooked; they only need warming through, and hard stirring will break the slices into rubble. Do not let the sauce return to a boil.
- Diamonds of toasted breadCroûtons cut into lozenges — trim crusts from firm white bread, toast, then cut on the diagonal both ways. Set them around the rim of the dish just before serving so they stay crisp.
- YieldEight eggs in a cup of sauce serves four as a lunch or supper dish, three if it is the only substantial thing on the table.
The name misleads: there is no tripe in eggs à la tripe. The dish is French, œufs à la tripe, and it is generally explained as a resemblance rather than a substitution — sliced hard-boiled eggs bedded in a pale onion cream sauce look like the strips of tripe served in the same sort of white sauce, and the two dishes were cooked much alike. It belongs to the frugal end of the French repertoire, a way of making eight eggs into a course, and it turns up in English and American books through the nineteenth century. It also suits warm-weather cookery: the eggs can be boiled early in the day, the sauce takes minutes, and nothing needs a roasting oven.