Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Salmon Omelet
Salmon Omelet
Take about two ounces of the flesh of some cold boiled salmon, and shred it as fine as possible with a fork, put it into a basin with one tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and two or three small pieces of butter; break in three eggs, and beat the whole well together. Put one ounce of butter in an omelet-pan, place it over the fire, and when melted but not browned, pour in the above mixture. Stir it over the fire with a flat spoon until it begins to set, then cease stirring and toss it about for a minute or two. When delicately browned underneath, fold the omelet over, and turn it onto a hot dish, the browned side uppermost. Garnish the dish with fried parsley, and serve.
A straightforward three-egg omelet built on leftover poached salmon. The only real difficulties are heat management and the amount of butter, which is generous even by omelet standards.
- The hinge: keep the pan below browningThe instruction says melted but not browned, and then asks for a delicate colour underneath. Medium heat, not high — an omelet pan hot enough to brown butter will set the egg into rubber before the interior is done.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of salmon is about 60 g, roughly a third of a small fillet. One ounce of butter in the pan is 2 tablespoons, plus the two or three small pieces beaten into the eggs; halve the pan butter in a nonstick skillet without loss.
- "Toss it about"This means shaking the pan by the handle so the loose curd slides and the runny egg runs underneath, not flipping the omelet in the air. Stop stirring while the top is still visibly moist.
- The salmonCold boiled salmon means plainly poached fish, not smoked; it would usually have been cooked in salted water, so taste before adding salt. Hot-smoked salmon or canned will both work, but reduce or omit the added salt, and shred with a fork rather than chopping so the flakes stay in threads.
- Omelet-panA shallow pan with sloping sides, 8 to 9 inches for three eggs. A well-seasoned carbon steel or nonstick pan of that size is the modern equivalent; anything larger will spread the mixture too thin.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn bright and brittle. The parsley must be completely dry or the fat will spit violently.
- YieldOne omelet of three eggs serves one generously or two as part of a larger breakfast. Do not scale up in a single pan — make them one at a time.
Salmon omelets belong to the long nineteenth-century tradition of the made dish built from yesterday's fish, and the phrasing here — a basin, an omelet-pan, a flat spoon, garnish of fried parsley — is the language of English domestic cookery manuals of the mid-1800s rather than anything specifically American. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and compiled this book in 1896, drew on that established European repertoire; much of the volume reads as a working reference for a hotel kitchen expected to produce any dish a guest might name. Cold boiled salmon was a common leftover in a house or hotel that served whole poached fish, and turning it into an omelet was the thrifty answer at a period when breakfast in a good hotel was a substantial cooked meal.