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Mexican Omelette
Cut up half pound fat salt pork into small dices and fry out. Slice up about 3 good sized onions and fry very light brown. Remove seeds from 1 green pepper and chop fine. Add to above mixture. Add either a can of tomatoes or a can of Campbell's tomato soup or the equivalent of fresh tomatoes. Add 1 cup of finely cut cheese. Serve soon after cheese is melted.
A skillet of salt pork, onion, pepper and tomato bound with melted cheese — despite the name there is no egg in it at all. The one thing to watch is the cheese: add it off the heat or on the lowest flame and serve at once, or it will string and weep oil.
- No eggs, despite the titleThe name is loosely applied here, and the period does throw up other so-called omelettes with little or no egg in them, but the usage was never fixed. If you want an actual omelette, this mixture works well as a filling for a six-egg one.
- Fat salt porkSold as slab salt pork or streaky salt-cured belly, still available at many butchers. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the closest substitute; blanch salt pork briefly if it tastes aggressively salty, and note that the recipe adds no other salt.
- Fry outMeans render the diced pork slowly over medium-low heat until the fat runs and the dice are crisp — eight to ten minutes. Rushing it leaves the pork chewy and gives you no fat to cook the onions in.
- Green pepperIn 1900s American usage this is an unripe bell pepper, not a chile. If you want the heat the name implies, a jalapeño or poblano is closer to the mark, but that is a change from the original.
- A can of tomatoesAbout 20 oz (a No. 2 can) was one common size for tomatoes then, though sizes varied; a modern 14.5 oz can is a reasonable stand-in. In fresh tomatoes, figure roughly 1 lb, peeled and chopped. Let the tomato cook down until the pan is no longer watery before the cheese goes in.
- Campbell's tomato soupCondensed soup, undiluted. Campbell's condensed soups had been on sale since the late 1890s, and this recipe shows the can being treated as an ingredient in its own right; it gives a sweeter, thicker, smoother result than canned tomatoes. Use the can as it comes, without adding water.
- Finely cut cheese"Cut" rather than grated suggests a firm American or store cheese of the day; a medium cheddar is right. Grating it now is easier and melts faster. One cup is roughly 4 oz.
- YieldServes three to four over toast, rice or boiled potatoes. It is rich and salty enough that it wants a plain starch under it.
This belongs to a large family of early-twentieth-century American dishes labelled "Mexican" or "Spanish" on the strength of a green pepper and a tomato — the same logic that produced Spanish rice and Mexican rarebit in church and club cookbooks of the period. Philathea cook books were compiled by Philathea classes, the young women's Bible classes of the Baraca-Philathea movement — Baraca for young men, from 1890, Philathea from the early 1890s — that spread through Protestant churches in the United States and Canada. The unembarrassed instruction to reach for a can of Campbell's tomato soup dates the entry: condensed soups had been on the market since the late 1890s and were becoming a recognised recipe ingredient rather than merely something to heat and eat, a habit that would culminate in the casserole cookery of the mid-century.