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Rum Omelet
Put into a clean smooth pan a little fresh lard and be careful it does not burn or the color of the omelet will be spoiled. Whisk three eggs thoroughly until they are very light. Beat in one teaspoon of milk and beat continuously till the pan is hot and ready over a hot fire. Pour in and as soon as the omelet is set remove it from the hottest part of the fire; slip a knife under it to prevent it from sticking. When the center is almost firm, tip the pan and work the omelet loose so that it will fold easily and neatly and then turn it carefully out on a hot platter. Dust powdered sugar over it very generously and with a hot iron rod singe the sugar in stripes. Pour a glass of Jamaica rum around it and when the omelet is on the table set fire to the rum. Dip the burning rum over the omelet with a spoon, extinguish the flame and serve, As salt mixed with eggs prevents them from rising but is necessary to the taste, add a little to the omelet just before folding. APPLE OMELET TO SERVE WITH BROILED SPARERIBS
A sweet omelet finished at the table with burning rum — the technique is straightforward, but two details in the original (the glass of rum and the hot iron rod) need translating.
- The hinge: get it out of the pan underdoneThe omelet is folded and turned out while the center is almost firm, not set. It carries on cooking on the hot platter, and it will be sugared, scorched and doused with hot rum after that. An omelet fully cooked in the pan will be dry by the time it reaches the table.
- "A glass" of rumAmbiguous in the original. A wine glass of the period was roughly 2 fl oz, and that is a sensible reading here; a tumbler's worth would be far too much to burn off. Jamaica rum meant a dark, heavy, high-ester pot-still rum, and a dark rum is still the right choice.
- Flambé safelyWarm the rum first — cold spirit will not light — but warm it away from the omelet, pour it from a measured jug rather than the bottle, and light it with a long match once the bottle is back on the counter. Never pour spirit from a bottle toward a flame; the vapor can carry fire back into it. Keep it clear of low-hanging fixtures and hair.
- The hot iron rodA salamander: an iron rod or disc heated in the fire and drawn over sugar to caramelize it. A metal skewer heated red on a gas burner does the same job, as does a kitchen blowtorch. A very hot broiler for under a minute will glaze the whole surface, though you lose the stripes.
- Powdered sugarPeriod "powdered" sugar was granulated sugar ground fine — closer to today's superfine or caster sugar than to confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and scorches unevenly. Superfine caramelizes best under the iron.
- Fresh lardLard has a high smoke point and a clean flavor. Clarified butter or a neutral oil works; whole butter browns and will tint the omelet, which is exactly what the recipe warns against.
- The salt noteThe instruction to salt at the last moment reflects the old belief that salt keeps eggs from rising. Salting early does slightly loosen the protein structure, but in a three-egg omelet cooked in two minutes the difference is negligible. Salt when you like.
- YieldThree eggs makes one generous portion or two small ones. Do not scale a single pan up past four eggs; make successive omelets instead.
The omelette au rhum was a standard of nineteenth-century restaurant and household cookery on both sides of the Atlantic — a sweet omelet, glazed with caramelized sugar and set alight with spirit at the table, in the same family as the crêpe and pudding flambés that closed a formal meal. Jamaica rum is specified because it was the benchmark dark rum in the English-speaking kitchen of the period: pot-distilled and pungent. The hot iron rod is the giveaway of an older kitchen; a salamander was heated in the range and used for anything needing top heat, most ranges of the day having no broiler. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book as part of a wider line of domestic manuals aimed at the middle-class housekeeper, and a dish like this belongs to the chapter of its ambitions that involves guests at the table — a showpiece that costs three eggs and a little rum.