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Potato Omelet
Peel and boil three or four large potatoes, and when soft, drain and mash them; beat four eggs with a teacupful of milk, mix in with the potatoes and flavor to taste with herbs, salt and a small amount of pepper. Cut four ounces of lean bacon into small squares, and place them in a fryingpan with a lump of butter, fry them until crisp and brown, then mix in the potatoes, and stir over the fire until well set; when nicely browned on both sides, fold the omelet over, place it on a hot dish, and serve.
This is a thick, potato-bound omelet closer to a Spanish tortilla than to a French rolled omelet, and the ratio matters more than the technique.
- The hinge: it must set slowlyWith mashed potato in the mix the egg cannot move freely, so a hot pan scorches the bottom before the centre firms. Keep the heat at medium-low and give it eight to ten minutes before attempting to turn or fold.
- A teacupfulNineteenth-century cup measures were not standardised, and a "teacupful" is reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 8 fl oz depending on the book, so treat the milk as an approximation. Three or four large potatoes with four eggs gives a soft, spoonable mixture; if yours is loose, hold back some of the milk.
- Mash dryDrain the potatoes well and let them steam off in the hot pan for a minute before mashing. Wet potato thins the egg and the omelet will weep in the pan.
- BaconThe recipe asks only for four ounces of lean bacon cut into small squares; slab bacon cut into lardons suits it, though the text does not say whether smoked or unsmoked. Modern supermarket bacon is often wetter and saltier; render it and pour off most of the fat, and salt the potato mixture only after tasting.
- Herbs"Flavor to taste with herbs" is left open; parsley, chives or a little thyme would all suit. A generous handful of parsley is not too much for this quantity.
- Browning both sidesFolding a potato omelet is awkward. Slide it onto a plate and invert it back into the pan to brown the second side, then fold — or leave it flat and cut it in wedges, which is how the same mixture is served in Spain.
- Pan size and yieldUse a 10-inch pan; the mixture is too heavy for anything smaller. It serves three or four as a supper dish, and is good at room temperature.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection was assembled from the working repertoire of a large hotel kitchen, which is why a homely dish like this sits alongside the terrapin and the canvasback duck; potato-and-egg dishes were standard economy cookery on both sides of the Atlantic. The formula is close to the Spanish tortilla de patatas and the German Bauernfrühstück: the starch stretches the eggs, and the four eggs here will feed three or four. Substantial bound omelets of this kind were common in nineteenth-century American books, where "omelet" covered flat mixtures cooked in a frying pan as well as the rolled French kind.