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Lemon Omelets
Mix one dessertspoonful of corn starch with one teaspoonful of flour and one-half teacupful of milk or cream; when quite smooth, stir in the yolks of four well-beaten eggs and one-half pint of boiling milk. Beat the whites of four eggs to a stiff froth and mix them with the above preparation. Butter four pudding plates, pour the mixture on them, dividing it equally and bake in a quick oven for ten minutes or until well set. When cooked, turn the omelets onto a hot dish, spread about one teaspoonful of lemon-honey over half of each, fold them over, sprinkle a little powdered sugar on the top, and serve while hot.
This is a sweet soufflé omelet baked on plates rather than cooked in a pan, and it lives or dies by how gently the beaten whites are folded in. Work quickly once they are in: the batter will not wait while the oven comes up.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe yolk base is thick and hot, the whites are stiff, and stirring them together will knock out the air that makes these rise. Lighten the base with a spoonful of the whites first, then fold in the rest in two additions and get the plates into the oven at once.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F, the range usually given for the term. At that heat ten minutes is about right for a thin layer on a plate; the omelet should be set and puffed with no wet slick in the centre.
- DessertspoonfulTwo level teaspoons. So roughly 2 teaspoons cornstarch to 1 teaspoon flour.
- TeacupfulA period teacup runs 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so half a teacupful is roughly 2 to 3 fluid ounces, about 4 to 6 tablespoons of milk or cream. Use enough to make a smooth, lump-free slurry with the starch and flour; the exact figure is genuinely imprecise here.
- Half a pint of boiling milkOne cup. Add it to the yolk-and-starch mixture in a slow stream while whisking, or the eggs will curdle; the base should thicken to the consistency of a loose custard.
- Pudding platesShallow ovenproof plates or small gratin dishes, buttered generously. Modern equivalents are individual gratin dishes or small ovenproof plates.
- Lemon-honeyAn older name used for lemon curd -- eggs, sugar, butter and lemon cooked to a spread. Ready-made lemon curd is the direct substitute; nothing containing honey is required.
- YieldFour individual omelets, one per plate, served as a dessert or a late supper sweet. They collapse within a few minutes of leaving the oven, so fill, fold, dust and carry them straight to the table.
Sweet omelets of this kind -- eggs lightened with whipped whites, thickened with a little starch, and filled with jam or curd -- were, by most accounts, a standard closing course in nineteenth-century hotel and household cookery, sitting on the boundary between omelet and soufflé. The form may be read as a way of managing portions: four identical servings that go into the oven together and reach the dining room at the same moment, without a cook standing over four pans. "Lemon-honey" is generally taken to be the older name for what is now sold as lemon curd, and it appears under that name in British and, it seems, American books through the later 1800s before curd became the usual term.