No. 2881

Bertini Omelet

Omelette a la Bertini

Prepare and cook an omelet the same as Argentine (No. 2878). Pour into a risot, thickened with parmesan, a little half-glaze (No. 400) and veloute (No. 415) and with it fill the omelet. Cut some celery hearts or roots in quarter-inch squares, blanch, cook in broth (No. 194a) and let fall to a glaze; and veloute reduced with white wine, season and pour this around the dressed omelet.

← No. 2880 Beef Palate or Lamb's Trotters Omelet Eggs & Omelets No. 2882 Bonvalet Omelet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for professional kitchens, leaning on numbered cross-references the reader is expected to look up. Stripped of that apparatus, this is a rolled French omelet stuffed with parmesan risotto bound with sauce, ringed by a white-wine velouté with glazed celery.

"Risot" is risottoThe Epicurean uses "risot" for rice cooked in broth until creamy. Make it firm rather than loose, finish with grated parmesan, and stir in just enough demi-glace and velouté to bind — a tablespoon or two of each. A wet filling will split the omelet as you roll it.
Half-glaze is demi-glaceRanhofer's No. 400 is a reduced brown sauce built on espagnole. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace, or veal stock reduced to a syrupy consistency, does the same work here.
VeloutéNo. 415 is white stock (veal or chicken) thickened with a blond roux. About a cup, simmered until it coats a spoon, covers both the filling and the surrounding sauce.
Celery hearts or roots"Roots" means celeriac, which is easier to cut into clean quarter-inch dice than stalk hearts. Blanch two minutes, then simmer in broth and let the liquid reduce until it films the dice — that is what "fall to a glaze" means, not a separate glazing step.
The hinge is the omelet itselfRanhofer sends you to No. 2878 for the method, which is not given on this page; his omelets are of the rolled French kind — beaten eggs into hot butter, stirred and shaken over heat, still creamy in the centre, filling spooned along the middle, then folded out onto the plate. It cannot be held; sauce and filling must be finished and warm before the eggs go into the pan.
Wine reductionThe recipe calls for velouté reduced with white wine; reduce it far enough that the wine loses its raw edge.
YieldThe recipe gives no egg count. A batch of risotto will make far more filling than one omelet needs, so scale accordingly or plan on eating the remainder as it stands.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its egg chapter runs to dozens of numbered omelets, most of them distinguished only by their garnish. Names like Bertini, Bonvalet and Argentine follow the nineteenth-century French convention of labelling a dish for a person or a place, then fixing that name to a specific combination — here rice, parmesan and celery — so that a kitchen brigade could produce it on command from two words on a check. Many of these dedications are now untraceable, and Ranhofer rarely explains them. What the recipe does document is the period's method of building a dish from stock sauces already prepared: demi-glace and velouté were made in quantity, and a garnish such as this one was assembled in the minute it took to roll an omelet.