Home › Vegetables › Omelet (Eggs tablespoons hot water)
Omelet (Eggs tablespoons hot water)
2 eggs 2 tablespoons hot water or hot milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter Beat eggs well; add salt and milk. Melt butter in frying pan; add egg mixture; shake pan vigorously until egg begins to brown on under side; then let it stand until
A two-egg French-style omelet, given in the terse shorthand of a 1907 candy-company cookbook. The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the finish has to be inferred from period practice.
- The salt is almost certainly a misprintOne teaspoon of salt in two eggs is roughly four times what is palatable. Other period omelet recipes commonly call for a saltspoon or about a quarter teaspoon; use about 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon.
- The missing endingThe instruction stops at "let it stand until" — a plausible completion is until the top is just set but still moist, then fold in half and turn out onto a hot plate. How much more the original said cannot be recovered from this fragment.
- Hot water versus hot milkWater gives a lighter, puffier omelet because it steams off; milk gives a softer, slightly denser one that browns faster. Either works, and two tablespoons is the right proportion for two eggs.
- Pan and heatA 7- or 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan over medium-high heat. "Shake the pan vigorously" is doing the work of a fork or spatula in modern technique — keep the eggs moving so the curd stays fine.
- Do not actually brown it muchThe recipe says to shake until the underside begins to brown, which suits a firmer American omelet. Pull it earlier for a pale, tender result; two eggs cook through in well under two minutes.
- ButterA tablespoon for two eggs, which is in line with other period omelet recipes. Half that is enough in a nonstick pan.
- YieldOne serving. Cook omelets one or two eggs at a time rather than scaling up; a large batch in one pan sets unevenly.
Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounds its chocolate and cocoa recipes with a full general cookery section. The omelet here is the plain version — eggs, liquid, butter, nothing folded in — which nineteenth-century American cookery writers distinguished from the puffy separated-egg "omelette soufflée" beaten stiff and finished in the oven. Some period manuals prefer hot water to milk, on the reasoning that water turns to steam and lifts the eggs while milk weighs them down.