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Omelet
4 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon shortening 1 tablespoon hot water few grains cayenne Cook together minced liver, onion and Spanish sauce or brown gravy, add vinegar, mushrooms and seasonings. Keep warm while preparing omelet. Make omelet following directions as given for light omelet. Just before folding spread with liver mixture. Serve with brown sauce or tomato sauce. Serve 6.
An omelet base with a savory liver filling, from a chapter of dishes meant for the sick and convalescent. The ingredient list covers only the omelet itself, so the filling has to be built by eye.
- The filling, in workable proportionsFor a 4-egg omelet, figure about 1/2 lb calf's or chicken liver, minced, with a small onion and 1/2 cup Spanish sauce or brown gravy, a few sliced mushrooms, and a teaspoon or so of vinegar. Cook the liver only until it loses its raw color; minced liver held over heat turns granular and bitter.
- Spanish sauceIn books of this period Spanish sauce is generally a tomato-based or brown sauce simmered with onion and sweet pepper. Any decent brown gravy or a thick tomato-based sauce does the same job here.
- ShorteningThe tablespoon of shortening is presumably the pan fat rather than part of the egg mixture, though the recipe does not say. Butter is better for flavor and browns more evenly in a nonstick or well-seasoned pan.
- The hot waterOne tablespoon of hot water beaten into the eggs is the old trick for a lighter, more tender omelet; it steams as the egg sets. Keep it to that amount or the omelet weeps.
- "Light omelet" methodThe referenced "light omelet" is most likely a puffy or souffle-style omelet, with the eggs separated and the beaten whites folded into the seasoned yolks, rather than a French rolled one. The pan and finishing directions are in the cross-referenced recipe, which is not reproduced here.
- YieldFour eggs will not feed six as a meal. The stated yield assumes very small servings; as a main dish it serves two.
- DonenessCook the eggs until set throughout rather than glossy in the center, particularly if the dish is intended for someone ill or elderly.
George Minot and William Murphy's 1926 work on lightly cooked liver as a treatment for pernicious anemia gave liver a period of near-prescription status, and liver dishes are common in the sickroom sections of American cookbooks in the years that follow. Whether this particular omelet was written with that in mind cannot be established from the page, which gives no indication of its chapter; folding minced liver into a light omelet with a brown or tomato sauce would, at any rate, make a strong-flavored organ meat easier to eat. "Invalid cookery" as a formal chapter faded from general cookbooks after mid-century.