Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Kidney Omelet
Kidney Omelet
Boil a mutton or other kidney, and when cooked, cut it into thin slices. Beat six eggs together with one tablespoonful of flour and one teacupful of milk, seasoning with a little grated nutmeg and salt. Melt a piece of butter in a fryingpan, pour in the omelet mixture, and stir it over the fire until it is firm; then lay the slices of kidney on top, and fold it over. When cooked, slip the omelet onto a hot dish, over which has been spread a folded napkin, and serve at once.
A late-Victorian breakfast omelet, thickened with flour and milk in a way modern cooks have largely abandoned. The batter behaves less like a French omelet and more like a set custard, which changes how you handle the pan.
- The hinge: cook the kidney first, fullyThe kidney goes in already boiled and sliced, purely as a warm filling. Nothing in the folding stage cooks it further, so simmer it until firm throughout — for lamb kidneys that is usually a matter of several minutes rather than a long boil — before it ever meets the eggs.
- Trim and soak the kidneySplit it, cut out the white core and any fat, and soak in cold salted water or milk for 30 minutes. Period cookery books commonly direct something of this sort; skipping it can leave a strong ammoniac edge.
- Mutton kidneyMutton is meat from a mature sheep (definitions vary, generally over a year old) and is hard to find at retail in many places. Lamb kidneys are the direct substitute; two of them, or one veal kidney, suit six eggs.
- A teacupfulRead it as roughly 4 to 6 fl oz. Victorian teacups ran smaller than the 8-ounce measuring cup, and this is a case where the original is genuinely loose — start at the lower end if you want a firmer set.
- Flour and milk togetherWhisk the flour into a little of the milk first, then beat in the rest and the eggs, or you will be picking out lumps. The flour is there to stabilise the milk so it does not weep.
- Stirring, then stopping"Stir it over the fire until it is firm" means moderate heat and constant movement only until curds form, then leave it alone to set on the base. Push it past that and the milk squeezes out and the omelet turns grainy.
- Pan and fatA nonstick or well-seasoned pan over medium heat, with a good tablespoon of butter. Six eggs plus milk is a heavy load, so err on the side of a larger pan — 9 or 10 inches — if you want to fold it cleanly.
- The napkinThe folded napkin on the hot dish absorbs steam and butter so the omelet does not sit in a puddle. Harmless to keep, and it works.
- YieldSix eggs serves three at breakfast, or two generously.
Kidney at breakfast was ordinary in Anglo-American households, and devilled and grilled kidney dishes came down from the English breakfast sideboard. This particular treatment — eggs slackened with milk and bound with a spoonful of flour — is the older English "omelet," closer to a pancake or a set custard than to the rolled, pure-egg French omelette of professional kitchens. The two styles coexist throughout books of this era, and the flour is the tell.