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Ham Omelet
Make white sauce No. 1 A (see page 68), and cool slightly. Chop enough cold ham to make four full tablespoonfuls. Beat the whites of four eggs stiff. Beat the yolks until thick, then add salt and pepper and four tablespoonfuls of the white sauce.
Cut and fold into this mixture the beaten whites of the eggs.
Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan, pour the omelet into this, and cook over a slow fire until it has puffed up and is slightly browned underneath. Sprinkle the ham over the surface and place in the oven a moment to "set" the top of the omelet. Do not leave it, or it will become too dry. Fold over, turn out on a hot platter, and serve immediately with the remainder of the white sauce poured around it. Parsley may be added, either as a garnish or chopped and mixed with the white sauce.
Creamed Ham (in Chafing-dish) Remove yolks from three or four hard-cooked eggs, and cut the whites in rings. Have ready minced seasoned ham, prepared by chopping fine or putting through meat grinder any small leftover pieces. Make in the chafing-dish white sauce No. 2, put ham in, and heat through. (Do not let boil while making these additions.) Add whites of eggs, season highly, grate yolks over top, and serve from dish.
This is a puffed or soufflé omelet rather than a folded French one, and it lives or dies on the oven step: the top must set and nothing more. Two dishes are run together on this page, the omelet and a chafing-dish creamed ham, and both lean on a white sauce recipe printed elsewhere in the book.
- The hinge: the oven momentThe author's warning is the whole recipe. The book gives no oven temperature, only "a moment" to set the top; a moderate oven (around 350F) for a minute or two, or a brief pass under a broiler, will do it. Left longer it dries out, as the author says.
- White sauce numbersOlder books graded white sauce by thickness: a thin sauce is about 1 tablespoon each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, a medium (the "No. 2" of the chafing-dish recipe) about 2 tablespoons each. Since the referenced page is not reproduced here, treat those as the standard ratios rather than an exact reading of this book.
- Slow fireLow heat on a modern burner, and give it time — 4 to 6 minutes for the bottom to brown while the interior stays foamy. High heat sets the base before the egg has risen.
- Use an ovenproof panAn 8-inch skillet with a metal handle, well buttered. The omelet goes from stovetop to oven without transfer, which the original assumes.
- Salt and the hamFour tablespoonfuls of chopped ham is a quarter of a cup. Modern wet-cured deli ham is saltier and moister than the leftover baked ham this book has in mind; season the yolks lightly and taste the sauce before adding more salt.
- Folding the whitesBeat the whites to firm but not dry peaks and fold in three additions. Overworked whites will not carry the yolk-and-sauce base, and the omelet will bake flat.
- Chafing-dish creamed hamA chafing dish gives gentle, adjustable heat, often over a hot-water pan; a heavy saucepan over low heat or a double boiler does the same job. Keep the sauce below a simmer once the ham goes in, as the author says.
- Reheating cooked hamLeftover ham going back into a hot dish should reach 165F throughout. In the creamed version that means heating the sauce properly before the egg whites are added, not after.
- YieldFour eggs makes a two-person omelet, three at a stretch as part of a larger breakfast. The creamed ham serves two to three on toast.
Books of this kind belong to a genre that flourished from the 1890s through the First World War: the leftover cookery manual, which treated the cold remains of a joint as a resource to be catalogued rather than a problem to be hidden. Ham was the ideal subject — cured, keeping well, strongly flavoured enough that a few tablespoons could carry a whole dish. The puffed omelet here reflects the era's fondness for showing technique: separated eggs, a folded meringue base and a white sauce made to a numbered formula, the sort of graded, teachable ratio that cooking-school writers such as those in the Boston tradition had put into general circulation. The chafing dish, meanwhile, was a fashionable middle-class fixture around 1900, used for late suppers and informal entertaining, which is why a recipe for using up ham ends is written for a piece of tableware rather than a stove.