No. 2895

Smoked Herring Omelet

Omelette aux Harengs Saurs

Pour three ounces of partly melted butter in a vessel, beat it up with a spoon, mixing in with it four egg-yolks, one after the other. When the preparation becomes frothy, add to it two small spoonfuls of flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lastly three stiffly beaten egg-whites. Mix into this paste the fillets of four smoked herrings heated in the steam of boiling water until the skin is sufficiently softened to remove, then cut them into large dice, suppressing all the bones. Butter the bottom of a large frying pan with melted butter put on with a brush, and when hot pour in the preparation; cook the omelet in a slack oven, pricking it several times with a fork; brush the top with butter and slide it on a dish.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a baked soufflé-style omelet rather than a folded pan omelet, and it behaves like one: the beaten whites do the lifting and the flour holds the structure. Ranhofer's directions assume a coal range and a cook who already knows what a slack oven feels like.

Slack oven"Slack" was the coolest working range of a coal oven, reckoned by later writers at somewhere around 250-325F. The low heat is what allows a slow, even rise; too hot and the surface sets before the centre cooks.
Quantities in modern termsThree ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons; "two small spoonfuls of flour" reads as about 2 level teaspoons, enough to bind and no more. Note the deliberate asymmetry of four yolks to three whites, which gives a richer, less airy set than an equal count.
The hinge: temper the butter, do not melt it"Partly melted" means soft and creamy, not liquid and hot. Beat the yolks in one at a time as you would for a hollandaise base; hot butter scrambles them and the mixture will never go frothy.
Preparing the herringWhole smoked herring, of the salted cold-smoked bloater type, are steamed only until the skin loosens. They are not being cooked through at this stage, just made workable, and the flesh should still be firm enough to dice cleanly.
SaltAdd the salt with a very light hand or leave it out. Traditionally cured smoked herring carries a great deal of salt, and four fish flavour this omelet thoroughly on their own.
Boning"Suppressing all the bones" is the tedious part and cannot be skipped: herring pin bones are fine and numerous, and they ruin the texture. Lift the fillets off the frame with a knife point and run a finger along each one before dicing.
Pan and prickingUse an ovenproof skillet, buttered with a brush as directed rather than a poured film, so the omelet releases in one piece. Ranhofer does not say why he pricks the omelet with a fork; the likely effect is to let steam out and help the heat reach the interior.
YieldFour yolks, three whites and four herring serve three to four as a lunch or supper dish. Serve it as soon as it leaves the oven -- like any mixture lifted by beaten whites, it sinks as it cools.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the French repertoire as it was actually cooked in an American luxury kitchen, and the egg chapter runs to dozens of numbered omelets distinguished only by their garnish. Smoked herring was the cheap end of that repertoire: cured herring was one of the great bulk commodities of the nineteenth-century Atlantic trade, and bloaters and kippers were breakfast and supper food across northern Europe long before they reached a Fifth Avenue menu. What Ranhofer does here is the standard restaurant manoeuvre of the period ake it it in a butter-and-egg construction elaborate enough to justify the dining room. The technique itself is a flour-bound omelet baked slowly rather than folded in the pan, a method sometimes associated with what French cooks of the era called omelettes souffl hat term is usned, though that term is usually applied to sweet souffl":"Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the French repertoire as it was actually cooked in an American luxury kitchen, and the egg chapter runs to dozens of numbered omelets distinguished only by their garnish. Smoked herring was the cheap end of that repertoire: cured herring was one of the great bulk commodities of the nineteenth-century Atlantic trade, and bloaters and kippers were breakfast and supper food across northern Europe long before they reached a Fifth Avenue menu. What Ranhofer does here is the standard restaurant manoeuvre of the period — take a humble preserved fish and set it in a butter-and-egg construction elaborate enough to justify the dining room. The technique itself is a flour-bound omelet baked slowly rather than folded in the pan.

Century Old Kitchen · Fish

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