Omelette
Break six eggs in a pan, beat them well together, add half a gill of milk, pepper and salt to suit the taste, and a few sprigs of parsley chopped fine. Beat all well together. Have the cooking-pan hot enough to brown the butter. Put in half a tablespoonful of butter. Pour the mixture in the pan or skillet to cook. When sufficiently done, roll with a spoon and turn into the dish.--Miss E. P.
Omelette.
Boil one pint milk in a shallow vessel.
Beat up four eggs very light; add salt, pepper, and a little flour, making it of the consistency of paste. Put this into the boiling milk. Have a pan well buttered, into which turn the mixture, and set inside an oven to bake a light brown. Serve immediately.--Mrs. J. D.
Omelette. 6 eggs beaten very light. 2 ounces butter. Salt and pepper to the taste. Chopped parsley or celery.
Fry a light brown in a well buttered pan. Some minced ham or oysters improve the flavor.--Mrs. R.
Omelette. 4 eggs beaten separately. 3 tablespoonfuls cream. Salt and pepper to the taste. --Mrs. G. W. P.
Four contributors, four omelettes, none of them quite what a modern cook means by the word. Read them as a spectrum: two skillet omelettes, one baked custard-omelette, and one separated-egg soufflé omelette that stops before telling you how to cook it.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 2 fluid ounces (1/4 cup). That is a generous amount of liquid for six eggs and will give a soft, loose set rather than a firm one.
- Brown the butter firstMiss E. P.'s instruction to heat the pan until the butter browns is the hinge of her version: the nutty butter is the seasoning. Half a tablespoon in a modern pan is thin cover, so use closer to a tablespoon in a 9- or 10-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet, and pour the eggs in the moment the foam subsides.
- Mrs. R.'s two ounces of butterFour tablespoons for six eggs reads as a mistake but is not; it is period richness, and it will pool. Half that is plenty unless you want the shallow-fried edge the original produces.
- The baked version needs an oven numberMrs. J. D. says only "bake a light brown." Treat it as 350F for roughly 20-25 minutes in a buttered shallow dish, until set at the centre. What she is describing is nearer a savoury baked custard than an omelette, and since the four eggs, flour and seasoning go into a pint of boiling milk, the paste must be stirred in gradually or the eggs will curdle.
- Eggs beaten separatelyMrs. G. W. P. gives no method at all. Beating the whites to soft peaks and folding them into the yolks and cream makes a souffle omelette: cook it gently in a buttered pan over low heat until the underside sets, then finish it under a broiler or in a moderately hot oven for a few minutes. It will start to sink soon after it leaves the heat, so serve it straight from the pan.
- Ham and oystersMinced ham can go in raw with the eggs. Oysters cannot be treated the same way — drain them well, or their liquor will loosen the eggs, and give them no more than a minute or two of heat, since an omelette's cooking time is not enough to firm a large oyster and too much to keep a small one tender.
- YieldSix eggs serve two or three; the four-egg versions serve two. Cook them one at a time rather than doubling into a larger pan.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, was assembled from the contributions of some 250 Virginia housekeepers, and this page shows the method plainly: four women sent in an omelette, and all four were printed, initials and all, with no attempt to reconcile them. The result is a useful record of how loosely the word "omelette" was used in nineteenth-century American kitchens — anything from the French rolled omelette that Miss E. P. describes, complete with browned butter and fines herbes, to Mrs. J. D.'s flour-thickened baked custard, which a French cook would not have recognised at all. The name itself comes through French from a root meaning a thin plate or blade, a reference to the flat shape.