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Omelette aux Confitures, or Jam Omelette
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.-6 eggs, 3 oz. of butter, 3 tablespoonfuls of apricot, strawberry, or any jam that may be preferred. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Make an omelette, only, instead of doubling it over, leave it flat in the pan.
When quite firm and nicely brown on one side, turn it carefully on to a hot dish, spread over the middle of it the jam, and fold the omelette over on each side; sprinkle sifted sugar over, and serve very quickly.
A pretty dish of small omelettes may be made by dividing the batter into 3 or 4 portions, and frying them separately; they should then be spread each one with a different kind of preserve, and the omelettes rolled over. Always sprinkle sweet omelettes with sifted sugar before being sent to table.
TIME.-4 to 6 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Omelette Soufflé. - INGREDIENTS for omelette for 4 persons.-6 eggs, 5 oz. of pounded sugar, flavouring of vanilla, orange-flower water, or lemon-rind, 3 oz. of butter, 1 dessertspoonful of rice-flour. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, add to the former the sugar, the rice-flour, and either of the above flavourings that may be preferred, and stir these ingredients well together. Whip the whites of the eggs, mix them lightly with the batter and put the butter into a small frying-pan. As soon as it begins to bubble pour the batter into it, and set the pan over a bright but gentle fire; and when the omelette is set, turn the edges over, to make it an oval shape, and slip it on to a silver dish, which has been previously well buttered. Put it in the oven, and bake from 12 to 15 minutes; sprinkle finelypowdered sugar over the soufflé, and serve it immediately.
TIME. About 4 minutes in the pan; to bake, from 12 to 15 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two sweet omelettes from the same page: a flat jam omelette folded round preserve, and a soufflé omelette finished in the oven. Both are quick, and both punish delay between pan and table.
- Sifted sugarSugar broken fine and passed through a sieve; icing (confectioners') sugar or a fine caster sugar are the nearest modern equivalents. "Pounded sugar" in the souffl ed small down fine, for which caster sugar substitutes directly and dissolves into the yolks readily.
- Butter quantityThree ounces (about 85 g) for six eggs is generous by current practice; an ounce in a well-seasoned or non-stick pan is plenty for a flat omelette, and the excess otherwise pools and fries the underside hard.
- Pan sizeSix eggs cooked flat need a 10-inch pan or the omelette sets too thick to fold cleanly. The alternative given in the recipe — three or four small omelettes in a 6- or 7-inch pan — is the easier route and gives a better ratio of egg to jam.
- Warm the jamCold jam straight from the jar chills the omelette and tears it as you spread. Loosen it over gentle heat, or with a spoonful of water, so it spreads in one pass.
- Rice-flourStill sold as rice flour, and worth using rather than substituting wheat flour: it stabilises the yolk base without developing gluten, so the soufflé omelette stays tender.
- Orange-flower waterAvailable from Middle Eastern grocers and good supermarkets, and much stronger than it looks. A quarter-teaspoon for six eggs is enough; more turns soapy.
- Oven for the souffléOven for the soufflé -- no temperature is given in the recipe. A moderate modern oven, around 350°F / 175°C, will set a 6-egg soufflé omelette in twelve to fifteen minutes; it should still wobble slightly at the centre.
- "A silver dish"Any buttered ovenproof serving dish will do — enamelled cast iron or a shallow gratin dish holds heat best. Modern non-stick pans with plastic or rubber handles cannot go in the oven, so the transfer step in the original is not merely decorative.
- Yield and timingThe jam omelette is given for four or five persons, the soufflé for four. The soufflé omelette begins to sink soon after leaving the oven, so have the plates, the sugar and the diners ready before it goes in.
Sweet omelettes belonged to the entremets — the dishes that came after the roast and before, or instead of, a formal pudding — and Beeton gives a run of them under the French heading because that was the language of the nineteenth-century English dinner table. Confitures simply means preserves, and the recipe's willingness to accept "any jam that may be preferred" reflects a household that would have had several jars from the summer's fruit standing in the store cupboard. The omelette soufflé that follows is the more ambitious of the pair: separating the eggs and folding whipped whites into a sweetened yolk base is the same technique as a baked soufflé, borrowed into a pan, and it appears in French cookery writing well before Beeton's book. The stated average cost of one shilling for either dish is a reminder of what her audience was buying — six eggs and a few ounces of butter were an affordable but not trivial outlay for a middle-class kitchen.