Rich Omelet
2½ tablespoons flour ¾ teaspoon salt 1 cup milk 3 eggs 3 tablespoons butter Mrs. E. A. Dwinell Mix salt and flour, and add gradually milk. Beat eggs until thick and lemon-colored, then add to first mixture. Heat iron frying-pan and put in two-thirds of the butter; when butter is melted, pour in mixture. As it cooks, lift with a griddle-cake turner so that uncooked part may run underneath; add remaining butter as needed, and continue lifting the cooked part until it is firm throughout. Place on hotter part of range to brown; roll, and turn on hot platter. 3 eggs
A flour-thickened omelet of the American school: milk and flour make a thin batter that sets into something closer to a rolled pancake than a French omelet. It is forgiving, and it wants a heavy pan and steady moderate heat.
- The measurementsThe salt is three-quarters of a teaspoon. The flour figure has lost its sense in this printing; for one cup of milk and three eggs, two to two and a half tablespoons is the amount that gives a batter with body but no paste.
- LumpsMixing the flour with the salt first, then adding milk a little at a time, is the whole trick. Add the milk all at once and you will be picking lumps out of the finished omelet. A whisk does in thirty seconds what the original asks be done by gradual stirring.
- Beating the eggs"Thick and lemon-colored" means whole eggs beaten hard for two or three minutes until pale and foamy, not whites whipped separately. The air beaten in is what lifts this omelet.
- The panAn iron frying-pan of eight to nine inches is right for three eggs. Cast iron holds heat evenly and takes the browning step at the end; a thin nonstick pan will set the surface before the interior has cooked.
- HeatMedium, not high. A batter omelet with milk and flour in it scorches on the bottom well before the centre firms, and the lifting technique only works if the uncooked part is still fluid enough to run.
- "The hotter part of the range"On a wood or coal range this meant sliding the pan over the firebox for a final blast of heat. On a modern hob, raise the burner briefly at the end, or slide the pan under a hot broiler for under a minute.
- Rolling outLoosen the edge all round with the turner, tip the pan away from you, and fold the omelet over on itself as it slides onto the platter. Do it while the surface is still slightly moist; a fully dry omelet cracks along the fold.
- YieldThree eggs and a cup of milk serve two generously, or three with toast alongside. It does not hold; serve it straight from the pan.