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Omelette Aux Fines Herbes
An omelet made in the usual way with an admixture of parsley, thyme and sweet marjoram. A French favorite. OMELETTE JARDINIÈRE-Stir into the beaten eggs before cooking, two tablespoons of mixed parsley, onion, chives, shallots, and a few leaves each of sorrel and chervil minced fine. Use more butter in frying than for the ordinary omelet. Another French favorite.
Two entries in one, both written as variations on a base omelet the book assumes you already know. The instructions are thin, so the base method carries most of the weight.
- "The usual way"The book assumes a base omelet recipe given elsewhere; the standard method of the period is a French omelet: eggs beaten just until whites and yolks are combined, poured into a hot buttered pan, stirred and shaken until barely set, then rolled out. For a working modern scale, reckon three eggs, a tablespoon of butter and an 8-inch pan for one omelet.
- Heat is the hingeA French omelet wants medium-high heat and under two minutes in the pan. Herbs stirred into the raw eggs will scorch and turn bitter if the pan sits over a low flame long enough for the eggs to dry out.
- Herb quantityTwo tablespoons of minced parsley, onion, chives and shallots is what the jardiniere version specifies, with a few leaves each of sorrel and chervil on top of that, and it is a lot for three eggs. For the fines herbes omelet no amount is given at all; a tablespoon of parsley with a pinch each of thyme and marjoram leaves is in proportion. Classic fines herbes is parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon rather than thyme and marjoram, so this is the book's own reading of the term.
- Onion and shallotRaw minced onion and shallot will not soften in the time an omelet takes. Sweat them in a little butter and cool them before they go into the eggs, or leave them out and let the chives do the work.
- Sorrel and chervilBoth are still grown but rarely stocked; farmers' markets in spring are the likeliest source. Sorrel collapses to a puree almost on contact with heat and contributes sharpness rather than bulk. Chervil is delicate enough that a little extra parsley plus a few tarragon leaves approximates it.
- "More butter in frying"No reason is given, though the likeliest one is that the greenery makes the mixture stickier and more likely to catch. A tablespoon and a half in a well-seasoned or nonstick pan is enough; the surplus should coat, not pool.
- YieldEach version as scaled above serves one, or two at a light lunch. Omelets do not improve when made large, so cook them one at a time rather than doubling into a bigger pan.
Fines herbes is a French kitchen term for a mixture of soft, raw-tender herbs, traditionally parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon, added at the last moment rather than cooked down; jardiniere means "gardener's" or "garden-style" and is used across French cooking for dishes carrying an assortment of vegetables. That the Butterick book lists both under their French names, and labels each "a French favorite," fits a wider pattern in American cooking of the turn of the century: Butterick was a pattern-and-magazine publisher selling middle-class households an idea of refinement, and a French name on a plain omelet arguably came with that. Sorrel and chervil were also easier to grow than to buy at the time, which is roughly the reverse of the situation now.