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Omelette Robespierre
3 tablespoons hot water 1 tablespoon powdered sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon vanilla Beat eggs slightly, and add remaining ingredients. Put one and one-half tablespoons butter in a hot omelet pan, turn in mixture and cook same as French Omelet. Fold, turn on a hot platter, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and score with a hot poker. 3 eggs Almond Omelet, Caramel Sauce 3 tablespoons caramel sauce Few grains salt ½ teaspoon vanilla Beat yolks of eggs until thick and lemon-colored, add caramel, salt, and vanilla, and cut and fold in whites of eggs beaten until stiff and dry. Put three-fourths tablespoon butter in a hot omelet pan, cover bottom of pan with shredded almonds, turn in mixture, and cook and fold same as Plain Omelet. Pour around Caramel Sauce. Pour one cup sugar in omelet pan, and stir constantly, over hot part of range, until melted to a light brown syrup. Add three-fourths cup hot water, and let simmer ten minutes.
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A sweet French-style omelet, finished by caramelizing sugar on the surface with a red-hot iron. The scoring is the whole point of the dish; everything before it is a three-egg omelet with sugar and vanilla.
- Ingredients for the RobespierreThree eggs, 3 tablespoons hot water, 1 tablespoon powdered sugar, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, and 1 1/2 tablespoons butter for the pan. The egg count sits apart from the rest of the list in this printing.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn books of this period powdered sugar generally means a fine-grained sugar, closer to what is now sold as superfine or caster than to modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch.
- The hot pokerA poker or metal skewer heated in the fire until glowing was drawn across the sugared surface to brand dark caramel lines. A metal skewer held in a gas flame with tongs does the same work; a broiler will melt the sugar evenly rather than score it, which is a different effect.
- Omelet panA 7- to 8-inch pan with sloping sides, well seasoned or nonstick. Cook over medium-high heat, lifting and stirring the setting curd, and turn it out while the center is still moist so it does not toughen.
- YieldThree eggs feeds one generously or two as a light sweet course. Sweet omelets of this kind were generally served as dessert or at supper rather than at breakfast.
- Almond omelet, separatelyThat second formula is a different dish: yolks beaten thick, 3 tablespoons caramel sauce, a few grains salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, then stiffly beaten whites folded in, cooked over shredded almonds in 3/4 tablespoon butter. Fold it promptly; a foam omelet deflates as it stands.
- The caramel sauceOne cup sugar melted dry in the pan to a light brown syrup, then 3/4 cup hot water added and simmered ten minutes. Add the water off the heat and stand back, as it will spit violently; return to the heat to dissolve any hardened lumps.
- "Hot part of range"On a coal range this meant directly over the firebox. Read it as medium-high heat, and stir the sugar constantly, since dry caramel goes from amber to burnt in seconds.
Sweet omelets held a settled place in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, sitting in the egg chapter alongside their savory relatives and doing duty as dessert or a supper dish. The finish here, sugar scored with a glowing iron, is the same trick as the salamander once used on burnt-cream and other glazed sweets: direct radiant heat that caramelizes the surface without cooking what lies beneath. As for the name, no connection to Robespierre himself is documented beyond fashion; French names carried authority on an American menu.