No. 2879

Bacon Omelet

Omelette au Petit Sale

For three raw eggs cut one ounce of bacon in quarter-inch thick slices; suppress the rind, and cut into small quarter-inch squares after paring off the smoked parts that cover the bacon; fry these pieces in butter, add the eggs, and finish the same as parsley omelet (No. 2903).

← No. 2878 Argentine Omelet Eggs & Omelets No. 2880 Beef Palate or Lamb's Trotters Omelet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives this in shorthand: the whole method lives in the cross-reference to No. 2903, the parsley omelet, so the only thing described here is the garnish. A few notes make it workable on its own.

What petit salé meansNot smoked breakfast bacon but lightly salt-cured pork belly, which is why the recipe tells you to pare off any smoked exterior. Unsmoked pancetta or slab salt pork is closer to the original than a supermarket rasher.
Quantities and scaleOne ounce of pork to three eggs is a single-serving French omelet, about 28 g. Multiply by servings rather than making one large omelet; three eggs is about the practical limit for a rolled omelet.
Slice, then diceThe instruction to cut quarter-inch slices and then quarter-inch squares gives you cubes, not strips. Uniform cubes render evenly and stay suspended in the egg instead of sinking.
Blanch if it is very saltySalt pork was often cured harder than much of what is sold now. If your pork tastes aggressively salty raw, a two-minute blanch in water before frying keeps the finished omelet from being oversalted, and salt the eggs only lightly.
The missing methodThe cross-reference is to the parsley omelet, i.e. the standard French treatment: beat the eggs just to combine, cook in hot butter over fairly high heat while stirring and shaking the pan, and turn it out while the center is still soft. It cooks very quickly.
Fat managementThe recipe adds the eggs straight to the pan. If the butter and rendered fat together look excessive, pour some off before the eggs go in; too much fat and the egg will not set into a coherent sheet.
DonenessClassic French practice leaves an omelet baveuse, still creamy inside. The recipe gives no doneness cue, so cooking to a firm, dry center is a choice rather than a fault in the original.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire of Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for some thirty years, and its egg chapter runs to dozens of numbered omelets differing only in garnish — a structure typical of the classical French kitchen, in which one master method is learned and then varied endlessly. Petit salé is French charcuterie shorthand for lightly salted pork, generally belly, traditionally kept in brine as a household staple and boiled with lentils or cabbage; using it as an omelet garnish is the thrifty end of that tradition dressed up for a restaurant menu. The instruction to pare away the smoked surface suggests that the American cured pork to hand was often smoked, and that a French kitchen wanted the salt without the smoke.