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Savory Omelet
Beat the yolks of six eggs till they are almost white, then beat the whites for the same length of time, and pour them over the yolks; add a dessertspoonful of chopped mushrooms, one teaspoonful of mixed herbs, one dessertspoonful of finely-chopped parsley, a few drops of lemon juice, pepper and salt, six tablespoonfuls of milk, and three teaspoonfuls of flour, and beat all well together for at least five minutes. Peel a small onion, slice, and fry in butter, when the butter is boiling hot take out the onion and pour in the omelet. Hold the pan over a clear fire in rather a slanting position, to keep the omelet from spreading; when fried a light brown fold it over with a slice, and serve very hot. A little grated tongue may be mixed with the omelet if desired.
This is a puffed or "souffléed" omelet stiffened with a little flour and milk, not the folded French kind. The eggs go into a pan flavored with onion that is then thrown away, which is the trick worth keeping.
- The onion is a flavoring, not an ingredientSlicing an onion into the butter and lifting it out before the eggs go in perfumes the fat without leaving anything to brown or weep. Take it out before it colors past golden, or the butter will taste scorched.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons, i.e. two-thirds of a tablespoon. It sits between the teaspoon and tablespoon in Victorian and Edwardian measure and appears constantly in books of this vintage.
- Beating "all well together for at least five minutes"Taken literally this knocks the air straight back out of the whites you just whipped. Whisk the yolks with the milk, flour, herbs, lemon and seasoning first, then fold the beaten whites in at the end with a light hand.
- Cook the mushrooms firstRaw chopped mushrooms release water into the batter and leave it slack. Sweat them in a little butter until dry, then cool before adding.
- Mixed herbsThe book does not specify. Depending on the source, this could be a dried blend or a fresh mixture chopped fine. Use about a teaspoon of dried, or a tablespoon of fresh.
- "A clear fire" and the slanted panA clear fire is one burned down past smoke to steady, even heat: medium on a modern burner, no higher, since the flour will catch. The tilting is how you gather a thin batter into a thicker mass on a wide range top; a 9- or 10-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan does the same work flat.
- A "slice"The period word for a flat turner or fish slice. A wide spatula folds the omelet without tearing the browned face.
- Grated tongueCooked, pressed beef tongue, once a standard cold-larder item and still sold at good butchers and delis. Any finely chopped cured meat — ham, bresaola — does the same job of salt and savor.
- YieldSix eggs makes enough for three as a light main course, or four at breakfast. Serve immediately; the puff falls within a minute or two of leaving the pan.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms at the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria from 1893, and the 1896 Cook Book that bears his name is less a record of hotel cooking than a vast compilation — some nine hundred pages — drawing heavily on the English and American household manuals then in print. This omelet shows its borrowed origins: the dessertspoon measure, the "clear fire," the "slice," and the flour-and-milk binder are all marks of the British domestic tradition rather than the French brigade kitchen Oscar worked in. Adding flour to an omelet strikes a modern cook as odd, but it seems to have been a familiar enough move in nineteenth-century home cookery, where it steadied a beaten-white omelet over uneven coal heat and stretched a modest number of eggs. The grated tongue at the end is a period reflex too: cold boiled tongue was a fixture of the well-run larder, and it was the sort of thing a cook might reach for wherever a savory scrap of meat would improve a dish.