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Apricot Omelet
Put the yolks of six eggs and the whites of four into a basin; sprinkle over them a small quantity of salt, and beat well. Pour into an omelet pan with a lump of butter, and as soon as it is set, turn it carefully out. Spread over as much apricot jam or marmalade as required, fold the omelet up, and place on a dish, sprinkle over powdered sugar, glaze in an oven with a salamander, and serve very hot.
A sweet omelet of the sort that closed a nineteenth-century dinner rather than opening the day. The whole thing takes about three minutes at the stove, so have the jam warm and the sugar and dish ready before the eggs go in.
- The egg ratioSix yolks to four whites gives a richer, softer, more custard-like set than whole eggs would. Do not be tempted to even it up; the surplus whites are what make an ordinary omelet spongy, and this one should be tender enough to fold around jam without cracking.
- "A lump of butter"Read this as roughly one tablespoon for a six-egg omelet, enough to coat a 9- or 10-inch pan generously. It should foam and just stop hissing before the eggs go in; browned butter will speckle a pale sweet omelet.
- "As soon as it is set"The hinge of the recipe. Pull it while the surface is still glossy and slightly loose — baveuse, in the French kitchens Oscar was drawing on. It will keep cooking in the pan and again under the glaze, and an omelet cooked dry at this stage turns to leather by the time it reaches the table.
- The salamanderIn 1896 this was an iron plate on a handle, heated red in the fire and held over the sugar to caramelize it. A modern broiler set high, with the dish 3 to 4 inches beneath it, does the same job in under a minute; a small kitchen blowtorch is closer to the original in spirit. Watch it continuously — the sugar goes from amber to black very quickly.
- Powdered sugarConfectioners' sugar with its cornstarch will glaze unevenly and can taste chalky. Superfine (caster) sugar caramelizes more cleanly under heat and is nearer what the period meant by powdered.
- The dishWhatever you glaze on has to survive a broiler, so use metal or ovenproof porcelain rather than a thin serving platter. Warm it first; a cold plate undoes the instruction to serve very hot.
- The jamWarm the apricot jam slightly and, if it is very chunky, press it through a sieve. Cold stiff preserve tears the omelet as you fold, and about a third of a cup is plenty for six eggs — more will run out at the ends under the broiler.
- YieldServes two as a dessert, or three at a stretch. Doubling in one pan does not work; make two omelets in succession and glaze them together.
The sweet omelet was a fixture of nineteenth-century restaurant dessert lists, and this one belongs to the French repertoire that Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen took as its foundation — the omelette aux confitures, folded around jam and glazed with sugar, appears in French and English cookery manuals through the 1800s. Apricot was among the commonest preserves for such work, apricot glaze being a standard finish in the pastry kitchen. The salamander named in the last line was standard equipment long before broilers existed: an iron disc heated in the coals and passed over the surface of a dish, and it is generally said to take its name from the mythical lizard that lived in fire. Oscar himself was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel rather than its chef, and his 1896 book gathers the house's working repertoire — dishes like this one, brief to the point of curtness, were written down for cooks who already knew what a set omelet looked like.