Omelette, Plain
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. -6 eggs, 1 saltspoonful of salt, 1/2 saltspoonful of pepper, 3 oz. of butter. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Break the eggs into a basin, omitting the whites of 3, and beat them up with the salt and pepper until extremely light; then add 1 oz. of the butter broken into small pieces and stir this into the mixture.
Put the other 2 oz. of butter into a fryingpan, make it quite hot, and, as soon as it begins to bubble, whisk the eggs, &c., very briskly for a minute or two and pour them into the pan; stir the omelette with a spoon one way until the mixture thickens and becomes firm and, when the whole is set, fold the edges over, so that the omelette assumes an oval form; and when it is nicely brown on one side and quite firm, it is done. To take off the rawness on the upper side, hold the pan before the fire for a minute or two and brown it with a salamander or hot shovel. Serve very expeditiously on a very hot dish and never cook until it is just wanted. The flavour of this omelette may be very much enhanced by adding minced parsley, minced onion or eschalot, or grated cheese, allowing 1 tablespoonful of the former and half the quantity of the latter, to the above proportion of eggs. Shrimps or oysters may also be added: the latter should be scalded in their liquor and then bearded and cut into small pieces. In making an omelette, be particularly careful that it is not too thin; and, to avoid this, do not make it in too large a frying-pan, as the mixture would then spread too much and taste of the outside. It should also not be greasy, burnt or too much done, and should be cooked over a gentle fire, that the whole of the substance may be heated without drying up the outside. Omelettes are sometimes served with gravy; but this should never be poured over them, but served in a tureen, as the liquid causes the omelette to become heavy and flat, instead of eating light and soft. In making the gravy, the flavour should not overpower that of the omelette and should be thickened with arrowroot or rice flour.
TIME. With 6 eggs, in a frying-pan 18 or 20 inches round, 4 to 6 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A rich, folded omelette in the Victorian manner, made with more butter and fewer whites than most cooks use now. Two details in the original will mislead a modern reader: the pan measurement and the salamander.
- Pan size"A frying-pan 18 or 20 inches round" is almost certainly the circumference rather than the diameter — roughly a 6-inch pan. Beeton's own warning against too large a pan is consistent with that reading. Six eggs in a modern 10-inch skillet will spread thin and dry; use a 7- or 8-inch pan, or split the mixture into two omelettes.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon holds about a quarter of a teaspoon, so this is 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper for six eggs. Season a little more generously if you like.
- Three yolks discarded of their whitesSix eggs with three whites removed gives a denser, more custardy omelette. Keep the whites for meringue or an egg wash; using all six whites is not wrong, only lighter and less rich.
- ButterThree ounces is about 6 tablespoons, and it is a lot — 1 oz beaten into the eggs, 2 oz in the pan. Two tablespoons in the pan is ample in a nonstick or well-seasoned skillet, and the omelette will be less greasy for it, which Beeton herself asks for.
- Heat"A gentle fire" means medium-low, not the fierce heat of a modern French rolled omelette. This is a slower, thicker omelette, browned on one face; 4 to 6 minutes is realistic at that heat.
- Salamander or hot shovelBoth were pieces of iron heated in the fire and held over food to colour the surface. Use a broiler for a minute, or simply cover the pan off the heat for 30 seconds to set the top.
- Eschalot and bearded oystersEschalot is shallot. "Bearded" means the tough frill of gill trimmed away after a brief scald in the oyster liquor — under a minute; longer and they turn to rubber inside the eggs.
- Gravy and thickeningBeeton is right that gravy poured over flattens an omelette; serve it alongside. Arrowroot or rice flour gives a clear, light sauce rather than the cloudy body of a flour roux.
- YieldFour or five servings reflects a multi-course Victorian meal. As a main dish this feeds two, or three at a stretch.
Beeton treats the omelette as a French dish naturalised into English domestic cooking, and much of her advice — small pan, gentle fire, serve the instant it leaves the heat, never let the sauce touch it — echoes what is often said to be the influence of the professional French kitchens that dominated nineteenth-century British ideas of good cookery, though the recipe itself makes no such claim. The word itself comes into English from French omelette, generally traced to older forms connected with lamelle, a thin plate or blade, describing the flat shape. What dates the entry most clearly is the equipment: the salamander, a long-handled iron plate heated red in the coals and held above a dish to glaze or brown it, was standard kit in a range-and-open-fire kitchen and vanished once enclosed ovens with overhead grilling became normal. The "average cost, 9d." and the note that eggs are seasonable at any time belong to a moment when a household budget was still worth pricing to the penny.