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Savoury Omelet
614. Make a batter of eggs and milk and a very little flour; put to it chopped parsley, green onions, or chives (the latter are best), or a very small quantity of shalot, a little pepper, salt, and a scrape or two of nutmeg. Make some butter, boil in a small fryingpan, and pour the above batter into it; when one side is of a fine yellowbrown, turn it and do the other. Double it when served. Some scraped lean ham, or grated tongue, put in at first, is a very pleasant addition. Four eggs will make a pretty-sized omelet; but many cooks will use eight or ten. A small proportion of flour should be used. If the taste be approved, a little tarragon gives a fine flavour. A good deal of parsley should be used.
Another. Let eight eggs be well beaten, leaving out two whites; add half a pint of cream, half a pound of melted butter, with some parsley and onions shred fine, a little pepper and salt; this mixture is to be fried in a pan, first browning a good piece of butter in it. Pour some gravy over it.
RAMAKINS. 615. Scrape a quarter of a pound each of Cheshire and Gloucester checse, and good fresh butter; beat all in a mortar with the yolks of four eggs, and the inside of a small French roll boiled in cream till soft; mix the paste with the whites of the eggs previously beaten, and put into small paper pans made rather long than square, and bake in a Dutch oven till of a fine brown. They should be eaten quite hot. Some like the addition of a glass of white wine. The batter for ramakins is equally good over macaroni when boiled tender; or on stewed brocoli, celery, or cauliflower; a little of the gravy they have been stewed in being put in the dish.
A flat, herb-heavy omelet of the older English type: cooked on both sides, folded once, and treated as a savoury rather than a breakfast dish. The instructions are compressed, so a few quantities need pinning down.
- The flour"A very little" means about a teaspoon for four eggs, whisked with a spoonful of the milk first to avoid lumps. Any more and the omelet turns to pancake; the flour is here only to steady the set.
- Milk quantityThe first version gives none. About a tablespoon per egg is a workable proportion and will not weep in the pan.
- Turning itThis is deliberately cooked through on both sides, unlike a French omelet. Keep the heat moderate so the outside colours to "fine yellow-brown" in three or four minutes rather than blistering, then slide it out, flip, and give the second side barely a minute. "Double it" means fold in half.
- HerbsChives are correct and the recipe is right to prefer them; a shallot must be minced very fine and softened in the butter first or it stays raw and harsh. "A good deal of parsley" is not an exaggeration — three or four tablespoons, chopped, for four eggs.
- The second version's butterHalf a pound of melted butter to eight eggs is far outside modern taste and will not emulsify into a batter. Two to three tablespoons is the sensible reading, with the half pint of cream (an imperial half pint, 10 fl oz) cut back to a few tablespoons unless you want a set custard.
- Ham and tongue"Scraped lean" means shaved to a paste with a knife rather than diced, so it disperses. Pressed cooked tongue is sold at good delicatessens; prosciutto or any dry-cured ham stands in without loss.
- YieldFour eggs in a small pan serves two as a light dish, one as a main. The eight- to ten-egg omelet the text mentions needs a considerably larger pan.
Before the French method of the soft, barely set, rolled omelet took hold in English kitchens, "omelet" here meant something closer to what a Spaniard or an Italian would recognise: a firm herb cake of eggs, browned on both sides and folded over. Parsley, chives and tarragon are all called for, and the writer's insistence that chives are best and that parsley be used generously reflects a period when kitchen gardens supplied herbs in quantity and they were used accordingly.