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Omelette, Bachelor's
INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 persons.-2 or 3 eggs, 2 oz. of butter, 1 teaspoonful of flour, teacupful of milk. AVERAGE COST, 5d. Make a thin cream of the flour and milk; then beat up the eggs, mix all together, and add a pinch of salt and a few grains of cayenne. Melt the butter in a small frying-pan, and when very hot pour in the batter. Let the pan remain for a few minutes over a clear fire; then sprinkle upon the omelette some chopped herbs and a few shreds of onion; double the omelette dexterously, and shake it out of the pan on to a hot dish. A simple sweet omelette can | be made by the same process, substituting sugar or preserve for the chopped herbs.
TIME.-2 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A flour-thickened omelette, closer to a thin pancake than to the French style — the batter sets in one piece and folds without tearing, which is the point of it. A few of the quantities and the fire want translating.
- TeacupfulA Victorian teacup is roughly 5 to 6 fl oz, so about two-thirds of a US cup. With 1 teaspoon of flour that gives a very loose batter; it is meant to be thin, not a pouring batter for pancakes.
- ButterTwo ounces (4 tablespoons) is generous for two or three eggs and reflects a period taste for a well-lubricated pan. One tablespoon in a nonstick or well-seasoned pan gives the same result without the omelette swimming.
- "A clear fire"On a coal range, a clear fire is one that has burned down past the smoking stage and gives steady, fierce heat. On a burner that means medium-high — hot enough that the butter foams and just begins to colour when the batter goes in.
- Pan sizeFor 2 or 3 eggs use a 7 to 8 inch pan. Anything wider spreads the batter too thin to fold, which is the one thing this recipe depends on.
- The two minutesThe stated time is 2 minutes, though the method itself says to let the pan stand 'a few minutes' over the fire; treat 2 minutes as a minimum. The omelette is not turned. The flour keeps the surface from breaking, so wait until the top is just set and no longer wet before folding rather than stirring or scrambling.
- Shreds of onionRaw onion added at the fold will not cook in the time given and stays sharp. Slice it as finely as possible, or soften it in a little of the butter first and set it aside.
- HerbsThe recipe says only 'chopped herbs' and does not specify which; the fines herbes group -- parsley, chervil, chives, tarragon -- is the usual reading, and parsley alone does perfectly well. Beeton sprinkles them on in the pan just before folding.
- The sweet versionIf you substitute sugar or preserve, leave out the salt and cayenne entirely and warm the jam slightly so it spreads rather than tearing the set surface.
- YieldAs stated, two servings, and it needs eating straight from the pan onto a hot plate. It slackens and toughens within a few minutes of standing.
The name suggests an omelette a man living alone could manage with the few things in a bachelor's lodgings -- eggs, butter, a spoonful of flour, the end of a jug of milk -- though the book does not explain it. The flour is what marks it out from the plain French omelette Beeton elsewhere describes; it stabilises the eggs so an inexperienced or distracted cook can fold the thing without it collapsing, at the cost of a slightly rubbery, pancake-like texture. Fivepence for two is a cheap dish by the book's standards. Eggs were cheaper and more plentiful in spring and summer and dearer in winter, so a dish flagged as 'seasonable at any time' had some practical value. Later editions of Beeton, expanded long after Isabella Beeton's death in 1865, accumulated many such small economical suppers aimed at readers keeping house on limited means.