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Butter (Eggs tablespoons cream)
1 cup bread cut in 1/3 inch cubes 5 eggs 4 tablespoons cream 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper Fry cubes of bread in butter until well browned and crisp. Beat eggs slightly, add cream, salt, pepper, and croûtons. Put two tablespoons butter in hot omelet pan, and as soon as melted and slightly browned turn in mixture and cook same as French Omelet.
Eggs with Spinach à la Martin Cover the centre of a platter with finely chopped and seasoned cooked spinach. Beat three eggs slightly, add three tablespoons hot water, one-third teaspoon salt, one tablespoon, each, red and green pepper cut in strips, and one tablespoon cooked ham cut in very small pieces. Heat omelet pan, put in one and one-half tablespoons olive oil, and as soon as heated pour in mixture. Cook same as French Omelet and turn on to spinach. Garnish with parsley.
Two omelets run together on one page: a croûton omelet and Farmer's "Eggs with Spinach à la Martin." Both depend on the book's French Omelet method, which is assumed rather than repeated here.
- The hinge: French Omelet methodThe book's own French Omelet directions are not repeated here. In general terms that means a hot pan, the mixture poured in all at once, the eggs picked up and drawn from the edges with a fork as they set, then folded and turned out; the book also has the omelet browned underneath before folding. It is a quick business, and the eggs should not be cooked dry.
- PanAn "omelet pan" of the period was heavy iron or steel, and such pans were often reserved for eggs and wiped rather than scoured. An 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned carbon steel skillet is the equivalent for a five-egg omelet; use a 7-inch pan for the three-egg spinach version.
- CroûtonsFry the bread cubes and let them drain and cool before they go into the eggs, or they will shed fat into the mixture. Stirring them in at the last moment keeps some crispness; folded in they soften almost at once.
- CreamFour tablespoons for five eggs is a generous amount. Period cream was sold in grades of varying richness rather than to one standard; half-and-half or light cream is the closest match, while heavy cream makes a heavier, wetter omelet.
- "Red and green pepper cut in strips"Sweet peppers rather than chilies; canned pimiento is one likely source for the red. Cut them fine, since strips will not soften in the short time the omelet cooks. Sautéing them briefly first is closer to the intended result.
- Hot water in the eggsThe three tablespoons of hot water in the spinach omelet are deliberate: steam puffs the eggs slightly and keeps them tender. It is not a substitute for cream that has run out, and the omelet will taste plainer than the first one by design.
- SpinachCook, drain hard, and chop; excess water will pool under the omelet and thin the platter. A pound or more of fresh spinach, or a 10-oz box of frozen leaf spinach thawed and squeezed, covers the centre of a serving platter.
- YieldThe five-egg croûton omelet serves two, or three at a large breakfast. The three-egg spinach omelet serves two.
Fannie Farmer's egg chapter reads as a catalogue of variations on one technique, and this page is a fair sample: the French omelet -- rolled, barely set, cooked in a dedicated pan -- was the skill a Boston Cooking School graduate was expected to own, and everything else was a matter of what went into it. The cro circums ton version belongs to a broad family of bread-and-egg dishes that stretch from Spanish and Proven al cooking to plain American frugality, bread being the standing answer to how to stretch eggs. " la Martin" is one of the many personal or restaurant dedications that circulated through late nineteenth-century American cookbooks without explanation, and no particular Martin can be securely identified. The ham and sweet peppers point to the turn-of-the-century vogue for canned Spanish peppers in genteel American kitchens, where they supplied colour on the plate more than heat.