Spanish Omelet
2 Tablespoons Melted Butter 1 Tablespoon Chopped Onion 2 Tablespoons Cornstarch 11/4 Tablespoons Barley Flour 13/4 Cups Strained Tomatoes 1 Tablespoon Chopped Sweet Pepper 1 Tablespoon Capers 2 Tablespoons Chopped Mushroom Dash of Tobasco 4 Eggs 1/2 Teaspoon Salt Pepper to Taste Brown the onion in the butter and add the flour and cornstarch. Stir in the flour and cornstarch. Stir in the tomato, stirring till it thickens, and add one-quarter of a teaspoon of salt and the the eggs till well mixed, add the water, and season with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste. Cook on a buttered omelet pan. Spread part of sauce over it, fold and dress with the remainder of the sauce
A tomato sauce thickened twice over — with cornstarch and barley flour — folded into a plain four-egg omelet. The sauce is the whole dish; make it first and hold it warm.
- The fractionsThe quantities read 1¼ tablespoons barley flour and 1¾ cups strained tomatoes. "Strained tomatoes" is what we would now buy as passata or a smooth tomato purée, not paste.
- Barley flourA thickener in use in the early twentieth century, though never as common as wheat flour. It is still available in health-food shops; all-purpose flour in the same volume will do the same work with a slightly cleaner flavour.
- Double thickenerTwo tablespoons cornstarch plus barley flour into 1¾ cups tomato gives a very stiff sauce, closer to a filling than a pour. If you want it loose enough to spoon over the folded omelet, hold back half the cornstarch.
- Cook the starch outRaw cornstarch and raw barley flour both taste chalky. Once the sauce has thickened, keep it at a bare simmer three or four minutes, stirring, before the pepper, capers and mushrooms go in.
- The garnish ingredientsSweet pepper, capers, mushroom and Tabasco belong in the sauce, added after it thickens so the pepper keeps some bite and the capers do not disintegrate.
- Water in the eggsThe method calls for water beaten into the eggs though none is listed. A tablespoon per two eggs is the usual proportion; it makes the omelet lighter than milk does.
- Pan and heatAn eight-inch pan over medium heat for four eggs. Move the eggs constantly until they are just short of set, then stop — an omelet finished in the pan will be dry once the hot sauce goes on it.
- YieldOne four-egg omelet, serving two, with sauce to spare. The sauce keeps three or four days refrigerated.
The name attaches to almost any omelet served with a tomato-and-pepper sauce, and in American usage it became restaurant shorthand rather than anything Spanish — the sauce owes more to French tomato cookery than to the potato-and-onion tortilla an actual Spanish kitchen would produce. Capers and "strained tomatoes" here both point to the tinned and bottled goods available to ordinary groceries, and barley flour suggests a moment when cooks were being offered alternatives to wheat.