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Spanish Omelet
If six eggs are to be used, peel one large tomato and place it in a chopping bowl with a green pepper, a small onion, a sprig or two of parsley, a stick of celery, stoned olives and mushrooms. Chop all fine and place the mixture in a stewpan with a little salt and let it simmer over the fire for about two minutes. Beat the eggs as for a plain omelet, put them in the omelet pan, and as soon as they begin to cook add the chopped vegetables.
TOMATO OMELET, No. I-Peel and split into pieces two tomatoes; remove the seeds and cut the tomato into small dice; fry in a little butter until almost done. Make the omelet in the usual way, first stirring the tomatoes into the beaten egg. TOMATO OMELET, No. 2- Make a plain omelet, spread with stewed tomatoes, fold and serve either with or without tomato sauce.
Three variations on the same idea, written for a cook who already knows how to turn out a plain French omelet. The Butterick book assumes that knowledge, so the useful work here is in the filling.
- The hinge: drain the fillingChopped tomato, onion and pepper release a great deal of water, and two minutes in a stewpan will not drive it off. Cook the mixture until it looks dry in the pan and tip off any pooled liquid before it meets the eggs, or the omelet will weep and refuse to fold.
- Two minutes is not enoughRaw onion and green pepper chopped fine need five to eight minutes over medium heat to lose their bite. Taste before you commit the mixture to the eggs.
- Unstated quantitiesOlives and mushrooms are given without amount. For six eggs, roughly a dozen stoned green olives and four or five mushrooms keeps the filling in balance with one tomato, one small onion and one pepper. More than about a cup of cooked filling in total and the omelet will not hold together.
- Green pepperThis means a green bell pepper, not a chile. American recipes of this period generally use "green pepper" for the sweet kind, and hot peppers are usually named specifically.
- "Over the fire"Medium heat on a modern burner. The phrase is a holdover from range-top cooking where the pan was moved nearer or further from the firebox rather than a dial being turned.
- Six eggs is a large omeletA six-egg omelet needs a 10- or 12-inch pan and is awkward to fold. Two three-egg omelets in an 8-inch pan are easier to manage and cook more evenly; the filling above serves both.
- When to add the filling"As soon as they begin to cook" means once the base has set but the surface is still loose. Spoon the vegetables down the centre rather than stirring them through, then fold.
- YieldThe six-egg version serves three as a main course, four alongside other dishes.
"Spanish" in American cookbooks of this period rarely meant Spain. It functioned as a general label for anything built on tomato, onion and sweet pepper, the same shorthand that produced Spanish rice and Spanish sauce, and it owed little to Iberian practice. A true Spanish tortilla is potato and onion set in egg and served flat; this is a folded French omelet with a stewed vegetable filling. That the Butterick book, published as an adjunct to a pattern and fashion business for a broad domestic readership, lists it alongside two plain tomato omelets suggests how thoroughly the tomato had entered everyday American cooking by the turn of the century.