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EGGS (Golden brown on part of range)
golden brown, on part of range where it will not burn. If moist on top, place in oven to dry. Separate omelet from sides of pan with knife, and beginning at side near the handle, roll omelet slowly and carefully into the shape of a jelly roll; turn on to a hot platter, garnish, and serve. Omelets may be varied in the following ways:
Bacon Omelet, by adding finely chopped cooked bacon before folding.
Cheese Omelet, by adding grated cheese before folding. Creamed Salt Fish Omelet, by combining creamed salt fish and finely chopped red pepper, and adding to omelet before folding.
Kidney Omelet, by adding stewed kidneys, highly seasoned.
Mushroom Omelet, by adding mushrooms.
And continuing through a multiplicity of combinations.
The page picks up mid-recipe, at the point where the omelet is already setting in the pan; what follows is the finishing method and a list of fillings. Treat it as instructions for the second half of a folded French omelet.
- "Part of range where it will not burn"On a coal or wood range the cook moved the pan away from the firebox to a cooler zone rather than adjusting a flame. On gas or electric, this is medium-low: hot enough to set the base to a light gold in two or three minutes, not so hot that the underside colors before the center is thickened.
- Drying the top in the ovenA moist surface was finished in the residual heat of the oven for a minute or two; the book gives no temperature. A broiler set on low a few inches from the surface does the same job faster; watch it, since an omelet goes from set to leathery quickly.
- Rolling, not foldingThe hinge of the method is starting at the handle side and rolling the omelet away from you in stages, using the knife or a palette to keep it free of the pan sides. Tilting the pan over the platter at the end lets the roll turn itself out seam-side down.
- Creamed salt fishSalt cod of this period was hard, dry and heavily salted, and required soaking in several changes of cold water for up to a day before it was flaked and creamed. Modern salt cod is often lighter cured; taste a poached scrap before deciding how long to soak.
- KidneysVeal or lamb kidneys were an ordinary butcher's item then and are a special order now. They need the white core cut out and a short, hot cooking; "highly seasoned" in a book of this date is more likely to point to mustard, cayenne or Worcestershire than to heat from chilies.
- Fillings go in warm and dryEvery variation listed is added just before the omelet is closed, and the cooked ones should be drained. Wet mushrooms or watery creamed fish will loosen the set eggs and split the roll.
- YieldThe recipe gives none. A rolled omelet of this type is usually built on four to six eggs and serves two, with about half a cup of filling.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, in the first decade of the twentieth century — one of many promotional cookbooks that food companies published to put their product into American kitchens, and which incidentally preserved a full course of ordinary domestic cookery. The instruction to move the pan to a cooler part of the range is the clearest period marker here: heat was managed by geography on a cast-iron stove top, not by a dial. The catalogue of variations, ending with the resigned "a multiplicity of combinations," reflects the Boston cooking-school habit of teaching one master method and hanging every possible dish off it, an approach generally traced to Fannie Farmer and her predecessors at the Boston Cooking School.