Omelet
Four eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 teaspoon cornstarch or flour dissolved in milk, season with salt and pepper; turn into buttered frying pan. When browned on the underside, place a plate over the pan; turn the omelet out and fold.
A puffed, soufflé-style omelet of the sort that filled American cookbooks around 1900, thickened slightly with starch so it holds its loft. The whole thing hinges on folding the beaten whites in gently and keeping the heat low enough that the base sets before the top collapses.
- The hinge: heat and patienceCook over low to moderate heat, uncovered; roughly 5 to 8 minutes is a reasonable guide, though the recipe gives no time and asks only that the underside brown. A range of the period would have let the pan sit away from the hottest spot; on a gas burner the underside will scorch long before the interior sets if the flame is high.
- Folding, not stirringBeat the yolks with the milk, starch and seasoning, then fold that into the whites in two or three additions with a spatula. Overmixing knocks out the air and you get a flat, slightly gluey pancake instead.
- The cornstarchOne teaspoon is a stabiliser, not a thickener. Dissolve it in the 2 tablespoons of milk first, as the recipe directs, or it will seize into lumps in the yolks. Flour works the same way but can taste faintly raw if the omelet is cooked only briefly.
- Pan sizeUse an 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet. A larger pan spreads four eggs too thin to puff; a smaller one leaves the centre wet.
- Turning it outThe plate-over-the-pan method is a period trick from before nonstick surfaces. It works, but the omelet arrives browned-side-up; if you would rather have the presentation side out, slide it from the pan and fold it over on itself.
- YieldFour eggs serve two as a light main course, one if it is the centre of a plate. It does not hold; serve it the moment it leaves the pan.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks routinely divided omelets into two families: the plain French sort, rolled and barely set, and the "puffy" or "soufflé" omelet built on separately beaten whites. The second kind appears often in household manuals like this one, partly because a beaten-white omelet is forgiving of the uneven heat of a wood or coal range. The teaspoon of cornstarch reflects the ready availability of commercially milled corn starch, which had been a pantry staple since the mid-nineteenth century and was pressed into service as an all-purpose stabiliser in custards, puddings and egg dishes. Recipes of this length were written for someone who already knew what an omelet should look like; the instruction to lay a plate over the pan and invert is the only real technique the author felt obliged to spell out.