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Mock Omelette
Two cups bread crumbs soaked all night in one and one-half cup milk. Add, next morning, three eggs, whites lightly stirred in; pepper, one teaspoonful salt.--Mrs. E. W.
A stretcher recipe: bread and milk standing in for most of the eggs. The original assumes you know what to do with the batter once it is mixed, so the cooking is left entirely to the cook.
- The missing instructionNothing here tells you to cook it. Pour the mixture into a heavy skillet with a generous film of butter over medium-low heat, let it set undisturbed until the edges firm, then finish it either folded or under a broiler. A soaked-crumb batter is heavier than plain egg and scorches quickly, so keep the heat below what you would use for a true omelette.
- Bread crumbsThese are soft crumbs torn or grated from stale household loaf, not the dry sandy crumbs sold in canisters. Two cups of soft crumbs is roughly four thick slices of a plain white loaf, crusts off. Dry commercial crumbs will absorb the milk into paste rather than swelling into a soft panade.
- The overnight soakThis is not optional padding. The crumbs need several hours to dissolve into the milk so the finished dish is smooth rather than lumpy. If pressed for time, warm the milk and give it an hour, then beat the mixture hard with a fork.
- "Whites lightly stirred in"The wording probably implies separating the eggs, working the yolks into the soaked crumbs and adding the whites last with a light hand, though the original does not spell this out. Note that it says stirred in lightly, not beaten stiff, so whatever lift the batter gets is modest.
- Salt and pepperA full teaspoon of salt is reasonable for the volume of bread here, but taste the soaked crumbs first if you are using salted butter to cook in. The pepper is left unmeasured, so the quantity is your judgement.
- YieldEnough for three or four at breakfast, or two if it is the only substantial dish. It cooks well in a nine- or ten-inch skillet.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, gathered contributions from Virginia housekeepers and their circles, which is why so many entries carry only a set of initials. "Mock" recipes run right through nineteenth-century American cookery — mock turtle, mock oyster, mock mince — and almost always mean the same thing: a cheaper or more available material standing in for a dear one. Here three eggs and stale bread do the work of a larger number, a domestic economy that mattered in a period when eggs were seasonal and many households depended on their own hens. The soaked-bread base is a panade, the same technique that lightens forcemeats and puddings, and it gives the dish a soft, custardy body closer to a bread pudding than to a French omelette.