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Celestine Omelet
Pound six macaroons, put them in a bowl, adding three tablespoonfuls of apple jelly and one tablespoonful of whipped cream, and mix it well with a spatula. Make a sweet omelet with twelve eggs, fold over the side opposite the pan, pour the mixture into the center, fold the other side over and turn the omelet out onto a hot dish. Sprinkle the top with three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, glaze the omelet, and decorate it with some ladyfingers cut into halves, also a teacupful of whipped cream.
A dessert omelet from the Waldorf's repertoire, built on the assumption of a large pan, a hot salamander and a cook who can turn twelve eggs out in one piece. Most of the adaptation is about scale and heat.
- The hinge: cook it softA sweet omelet is set on the outside and still creamy within; once the eggs firm through, the sugar in them browns and the texture turns rubbery. Work over brisk heat, stir until large curds form, then let it set for only a few seconds before folding.
- Twelve eggs is a banquet portionProbably service for six or more, and it wants a very large pan and real forearm strength. Two omelets of six eggs each in a 10-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan are easier to handle and can be filled and glazed identically.
- "Sweet omelet"The book does not explain the term, assuming the reader knows it means eggs beaten with sugar rather than seasoned savoury. Period proportions vary; a little sugar to taste is the sense of it. No cheese, no herbs.
- MacaroonsThese are the dry almond macaroons of the period, closer to Italian amaretti than to the chewy coconut kind. Six pounded will give roughly half a cup of crumbs, depending on their size; coconut macaroons will make the filling greasy and heavy.
- Apple jellyClear, firm apple jelly was a standard pastry item because it sets bright and tastes neutral. Any clear jelly works; jam with fruit pieces will weep into the eggs.
- "Glaze the omelet"The kitchen would have passed a red-hot salamander iron over the sugared top to caramelize it in seconds. Under a modern broiler, set the dish close to the element and watch continuously — thirty to sixty seconds is enough, and the eggs overcook fast.
- A teacupfulPeriod teacup measures are not standard, running somewhere between about 4 and 6 fl oz. The recipe measures the cream after whipping. It is a garnish piped or spooned around the dish, not folded in.
- ServingAssemble, glaze and send it out at once. The caramelized sugar softens within a few minutes and the omelet deflates as it cools.
Sweet omelets belonged to the dessert course in nineteenth-century French service, and the classical repertoire is full of them — omelette aux confitures, omelette soufflée — often distinguished chiefly by filling and finish. Garnishes and preparations named for women, Célestine among them, are a persistent habit of that repertoire; the names are generally traced to a patron, a performer or a chef's whim, and in most cases the specific origin is undocumented. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf dining rooms from 1893 and put his name to this book in 1896, was recording the hotel's working repertoire rather than inventing dishes, and the recipe reads accordingly: quantities for a table of guests, a salamander taken for granted, and no explanation of what a sweet omelet is.