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Cepes Omelet
Fry half a dozen cepes cut into small pieces in one-half ounce of butter for two minutes. Beat a dozen eggs in a bowl, season with one pinch of salt and one-half pinch of pepper, pour them over the cepes, and make an omelet as described under omelets.
A plain French omelet with mushrooms folded through, written for a professional line cook who already knew the house omelet method. The gaps are all in what Oscar assumed you knew.
- CepesCepes are Boletus edulis, sold today as porcini. Half a dozen fresh caps is roughly 8-10 oz; if using dried, 2 oz soaked in warm water for 20 minutes gets you close, and the strained soaking liquid is worth saving for something else.
- The butter is shortHalf an ounce (one tablespoon) will not brown eight ounces of mushrooms. Use 2-3 tablespoons, and cook the cepes in a wide pan so they release and reabsorb their water rather than steaming.
- Two minutes is not enoughFresh boletes are dense and wet. Give them 6-8 minutes over decent heat until the moisture has gone and the edges color, or the omelet will weep. Season the mushrooms separately and let them cool slightly before the eggs go in.
- A dozen eggs is not one omeletThis is restaurant volume, meant to be divided. Twelve eggs makes three or four French omelets of three eggs each, or two large pan omelets; a single pan of twelve eggs will not fold. Serves four to six.
- Pinch and half-pinchThe book never defines a pinch; a pinch is commonly reckoned at about 1/4 teaspoon. On that reading, twelve eggs would be lightly seasoned by modern taste; a scant teaspoon of salt total is more usual.
- The hingeFrench omelet, not a browned diner omelet: hot pan, constant agitation with a fork or spatula for 20-30 seconds, then stop stirring, let the base set for a few seconds and roll it out. It should be pale gold outside and barely set inside.
- Order of assemblyPouring the eggs directly over the mushrooms in the pan, as written, works only if the pan is the right size for a single portion. Cooking the cepes in advance and either stirring them into the beaten eggs or spooning them in as a filling before the roll is easier to control.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from the 1890s, and his 1896 Cook Book is essentially the house repertoire written down — some nine hundred pages of French hotel cooking, much of it terse because it was addressed to cooks who already knew the drill. Cepes were a luxury import in that kitchen: the great boletes of southwestern France and Italy do not cultivate, and before rapid refrigerated shipping an American hotel would likely have relied on them in preserved form. The mushroom is the point. The name cepe comes from the Gascon cep, a trunk or stump, for the fungus's thick stalk; Italians call the same thing porcino, little pig. Cross-references like "as described under omelets" run all through the book, which was organized as a working reference rather than a set of standalone recipes.