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Sweet Omelet
Break 4 eggs in a bowl, add 2 teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar and a tiny pinch of salt and beat just enough to mix well together. Into a very hot frying-pan drop 1 teaspoonful of butter, shake until it is evenly distributed over the bottom of the pan and pour in the eggs. Shake and stir with a flexible knife until the mixture begins to set, then loosen the edges and shake so that it will not stick to the pan. While still soft in the center spread quickly over it I spoonful of jelly, jam, crushed and sweetened fruit or any filling you wish, roll it over and turn out on a hot platter. Dust with a little powdered sugar and score with a hot poker. Put the remainder of the filling round the omelet and send at once to the table.
A plain French-style rolled omelet turned into a dessert, and it lives or dies on speed: four eggs in a hot pan are done in under a minute.
- Don't overbeat"Beat just enough to mix well together" is a real instruction. Whipping air into the eggs makes them puff and then weep; stir with a fork only until the yolks and whites are streak-free.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means what we would call superfine or caster sugar — cane sugar ground fine, with no added starch. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will work for the dusting but tastes chalky beaten into the eggs; use caster or ordinary granulated for the 2 teaspoons in the bowl.
- Pan size and butterFour eggs want an 8- to 9-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet. One teaspoon of butter is sparing by current practice; a full tablespoon gives easier release, and the pan should be hot enough that the butter foams without darkening.
- "Flexible knife"A thin palette knife or a silicone spatula. A rigid table knife tears the setting curd, and metal of any kind will scar a nonstick surface.
- Fill while wetThe jam goes on while the center is still glossy and loose — that residual moisture is what lets it roll without cracking. Warm the jam slightly so it spreads in one pass; cold jelly straight from the jar drags the eggs apart.
- Score with a hot pokerThis is branding: a metal skewer or the tines of an old fork heated red on a burner, laid across the sugared surface to caramelize lines into it. A small kitchen torch does the same job. The dusting sugar must be there first or there is nothing to caramelize.
- YieldFour eggs serves two as dessert, or one generously. The recipe scales badly — cook two omelets rather than eight eggs in one pan.
The sweet or "jam" omelet was standard in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookery on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is thrifty by nature: four eggs, a spoonful of butter and the end of a jar of preserves make a hot dessert for two with nothing that has to be bought specially. The technique is that of the French omelette, and the finishing detail — dusting with sugar and scoring it with a heated iron — echoes the salamander, a long-handled iron disc heated in the fire and held over food to glaze or brown the top; a poker was an obvious domestic substitute. The instruction to "send at once to the table" reflects the fact that an omelet collapses and cools quickly.