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Plain Puffy Omelet
4 eggs
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons hot water
Butter
Beat the egg-whites until stiff. Beat the yolks until thick and lemon-colored, beat into them the hot water and add salt and pepper. Cut and fold together the yolks and stiffly beaten whites. Melt enough butter in an omelet-pan to grease the bottom and sides of the pan. Turn the egg mixture into the pan and cook over a slow fire until it is puffy and a light brown underneath, then place in the oven until the top is dry. Touch the top of the omelet lightly with the finger and if the egg does not stick to the finger the omelet is done. Do not overcook it or it will shrink or be tough.
Loosen the edges of the omelet, slip a spatula or flexible knife under the side next to the handle of the pan, fold one-half over the other and press slightly to make it stay in place, slip on to a hot plate and serve at once.
A soufflé omelet, made without milk or flour — the lift comes entirely from beaten whites and the hot water folded into the yolks. It is done in under ten minutes, so have the plate warm before you start.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirOnce the whites are stiff, cut and fold them into the yolks with a spatula in a dozen strokes or so, leaving a few streaks. Stirring knocks out the air and you get a flat, dense omelet instead of a puffy one.
- Oven heatThe recipe says only "place in the oven" and gives no temperature. A moderate oven, around 350F, will set the top in roughly five to eight minutes; the finger test in the recipe is the check the book itself offers.
- "Slow fire"Low to medium-low on a gas or electric burner. The bottom should colour gently over four or five minutes — a hot pan browns the base before the interior has any chance to rise.
- The omelet-panA heavy 8-inch skillet with an oven-safe handle, well seasoned or nonstick. A plastic-handled pan will not survive the oven step, and a cold thin pan will stick.
- Hot waterNot a curiosity: the four tablespoons turn to steam in the pan and help the puff, though most of the lift comes from the stiffly beaten whites. Add it to the yolks off the heat and beat briefly, as the recipe directs.
- ButterTwo teaspoons is enough to film the bottom and sides. More and the omelet fries rather than sets, and the underside darkens unevenly.
- YieldFour eggs feeds two as a main course, or three or four alongside toast and bacon. It cannot be held: a puffy omelet begins to fall within a minute or two of leaving the oven.
- FillingsThe book gives it plain, but grated cheese, chopped ham or cooked mushrooms can be scattered over one half just before folding. Anything wet — stewed tomatoes, creamed vegetables — is better spooned around the plate than inside.
The puffy or soufflé omelet was a fixture of American cooking-school teaching around the turn of the twentieth century, taught in deliberate contrast to the French rolled omelet: separate the eggs, whip the whites, finish in the oven. Fannie Farmer and her contemporaries printed nearly identical versions, down to the finger test for doneness. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published this collection as part of a broad early-1900s business of selling domestic competence to home readers, and an egg dish like this one — four eggs, water, butter, no milk or cream required — fits that aim. The hot water is characteristic of the period's recipes, though what the writers intended by it is not stated.