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Variations of Plain Omelet
Variations of the plain puffy omelet or the plain French omelet may be made by adding any of the following ingredients to the omelet before it is put into the pan to cook, or by spreading one of them on top just before the omelet is folded. Allow one tablespoon of mixture to each two eggs used. Fish-Use any cooked fish. Chop it fine, season with salt and pepper and moisten with a little cream. Spread on the omelet before folding.
Ham or other meat-Scatter finely chopped meat over the center of the omelet while it is cooking. The meat may be improved by browning in a small amount of fat before it is added. Cheese or parsley-Prepare as for ham omelet.
Onion-Mix one tablespoon chopped onion and one teaspoon chopped parsley. Add to the omelet mixture before cooking. Jelly-Spread any jelly or jam over the omelet just before folding.
This is a table of fillings rather than a single recipe, and it assumes you already have the book's two base omelets in hand. The proportions are sound; the main thing to watch is that everything going in is already cooked and already warm.
- The two base omeletsA "plain French omelet" is the familiar rolled or folded omelet cooked fast in a hot pan. The "puffy omelet" of this era is the separated-egg kind: yolks and whites beaten apart, folded together, started on the stove and often finished in the oven until set. With the puffy version it is safer to put fillings on top just before folding, since stirring them in tends to deflate it, though the recipe here allows either method.
- The ratioOne tablespoon of filling per two eggs is restrained and worth keeping. A three-egg omelet takes about a tablespoon and a half; much more than that and the egg struggles to hold together at the fold.
- Fillings must be hotAn omelet cooks in two or three minutes, which is not long enough to heat a cold filling. Warm chopped meat, fish or vegetables through in a small pan first, or the center will be cool while the eggs overcook waiting for it.
- OnionRaw chopped onion added to the egg mixture will still be crunchy and sharp when the omelet is done. Soften it in a little butter for four or five minutes and cool it slightly before mixing it in.
- CheeseUse a cheese that melts rather than a hard grating cheese: Gruyere, cheddar or a young Swiss, coarsely grated, added over the center as the eggs set. Parmesan alone tends to go grainy and oily in a thin omelet.
- Fish"A little cream" here means just enough to bind the chopped fish into a spreadable paste; a teaspoon or two per tablespoon of fish is about right. Cooked salmon, haddock or leftover poached white fish all work; smoked fish will need less added salt.
- Jelly omeletThis is effectively a dessert. Warm the jam slightly so it spreads without tearing the egg.
- YieldFigure a two- or three-egg omelet per person. Omelets do not scale up well in one pan; cook them one at a time in an 8-inch pan rather than making one large omelet for four.
American household manuals of this period were aimed at a middle-class cook working without a trained servant, and this egg chapter reflects two competing ideas of what an omelet was: the rolled French omelet, taught in American cookery schools by the later nineteenth century, and the "puffy" or "foamy" omelet with separated eggs, closer to a souffle and forgiving over an unpredictable coal range. A table of variations like this one is an economical piece of writing: rather than printing a dozen recipes, it hands the cook a ratio and a list of leftovers, which is why cooked fish and browned scraps of ham head the list. The jelly omelet, now largely forgotten, appears as a light dessert or supper dish in nineteenth-century English and American household books.