Plain Omelet
4 tablespoons milk or water Salt and pepper 1/2 tablespoon butter Beat the eggs very light, yolks and whites separately; then fold the whites into the yolks. Add the seasoning and milk. Melt the butter in a frying-pan; pour in the omelet; brown carefully; fold over and serve on a hot platter. Garnish with parsley or olives.
A separated-egg omelet — closer to what we would now call a fluffy or puffed omelet than to the rolled French kind. The technique is simple, but it is unforgiving of delay.
- ProportionsThe egg count is not stated in the ingredient line as printed. Four tablespoons of liquid and half a tablespoon of butter suggest a small omelet; a common period allowance was roughly a tablespoon of liquid per egg, which would put this at about four eggs, but the text does not say.
- Fold, do not stirThe hinge of the recipe. Once the beaten whites go into the yolks, use a spatula and as few strokes as possible. Overworking deflates the foam and you end up with plain scrambled eggs.
- Work fastBeaten whites begin to weep and slacken fairly quickly once they stand. Have the pan and butter ready so the folded mixture can go straight in.
- Pan and heatAn 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet over medium-low. "Brown carefully" means exactly that — a puffed omelet scorches on the bottom long before the middle sets.
- Finishing the topCovering the pan for the last minute, or a brief spell under the broiler, will set the surface; the fold is easier if the top is no longer liquid. The recipe itself gives no such direction.
- Milk or waterWater gives a lighter, steamier result; milk browns faster and tastes richer. With separated eggs, water is the better choice.
- ServingFold and serve immediately. A puffed omelet subsides soon after it leaves the pan, and the original does specify a hot platter.
The separated-egg or puffed omelet appears to have been a familiar form in American home cookery of this period, and egg chapters in general cook books often ran a plain omelet first and built the variations on it. The garnish instruction — parsley or olives — is a fair marker of the period's table, when a sprig of green or a few olives were a common way to make a plain dish look composed on the platter.